Dream a Little Dream of Me
by ZeeGerman
Summary: "I was dead and in heaven. Except it kinda looked like my prom. I was makin' out with this girl; her name was Kristen McGee…" Kristen McGee doesn't know she's Adam Milligan's idea of Heaven. Adam has recently become the stuff of Kristen's nightmares.
1. Prologue

A/N: As an avowed Supernatural fan, I must admit that the finale didn't sit right with me. This fic kind of came to me because I really enjoyed Adam's character and I thought he deserved a better ending. Plus I love coming up with backstories for throwaway characters.

Spoiler abound if you haven't seen the fourth/fifth season. Canon is maintained all the way to 5x18, "The Point of No Return". Rating is for sexual references and possible swearing. Brownies for anyone who spots the pop culture references.

Focus doesn't shift to Adam and the Winchesters until the next chapter because I felt like jamming them into the intro was sloppy, but believe you me, this isn't all about "the girl". I tried to keep everything about this chapter brief yet informative. It takes place over the course of a year.

* * *

**PROLOGUE**

Kristen McGee kept having sex dreams about her senior prom date, Adam Milligan.

When they first started, she thought that she was just _super_ horny. It made sense because Kristine Princess Leia McGee was the only person on the Environdale Community College campus who wasn't getting laid. Even 85-year-old Pierce from her Spanish study group was getting some, but Kristen had unrealistically high standards for the men who got to "tap" her.

On the list of influential people in Kristen's life, Adam Milligan didn't rank very high. At the top of the list was her sixth grade math teacher, Mrs. Harris, the only teacher who had ever paid attention to Kristen and assigned her eighth grade level homework because she knew Kristen could do it. Second and third were her parents, followed closely by her aunt Jayma, whose love of _Star Wars_ and intense poker skills had forced Kristen's middle name. Fourth was Noah Crosby, a football player whom Kristen had let cheat off her calculus tests and broke her heart by asking another girl to senior prom. Fifth was Rachel Maddow.

Then again, on that prom night, she _had_ allowed Adam Milligan to slip his fumbling hands inside her pink, tulle dress to become her 'first'.

Then again, it was far from a good experience. They got blood all over his mom's car, the condom broke, and the stress of a possible pregnancy caused a huge fight between them at Kristen's graduation party. She and Adam hadn't spoken since.

Then again, it wasn't like she hated him. As Windom only had one school and McGee and Milligan were next to each other on the attendance list, Kristen and Adam usually sat next to each other or did projects together. Adam had been a comfortable acquaintance her entire life.

Then again, Adam and Kristen were incredibly different people. He met his dad once a year for a baseball game and his mother was always tired because she worked at the only hospital in town. Adam had essentially raised himself. Kristen was the product of an accountant and a finance lawyer, the richest couple in town. They had raised Kristen and her two siblings in a comfortably upper middle class environment.

Then again, Kristen was the only other person in town who had met Adam's dad. Her little brother liked baseball, so she took him to games, and once she'd run into Adam and his dad. The man himself left little impression, but Kristen had always treasured the memory of the normally mellow Adam excited and elated to have his dad visiting.

Perhaps Adam deserved a higher ranking than Noah Crosby.

* * *

Kristen had never put much stock in dream psychology. Or rather she tried not to, because the dreams kept occurring, eventually becoming two separate dreams that repeated over and over again.

Dream Number One started in Cate Milligan's car, breath fogging up the window, Adam's thigh pressing between Kristen's legs as she kissed him, both of them overwrought with adolescent lust. It just kind of played on repeat until she woke up.

Dream Number Two started in much the same way, in Cate Milligan's car, but this dream took a drastically different turn. Adam was ripped from the car and Kristen sat helplessly as two shadowy figures ate his intestines.

After Dream Number Two had recurred a few times, Kristen spent less time sleeping and more time studying.

* * *

"I see your grades have improved," her father told her over dinner one night.

Her parents actually drove to the little town outside Chicago their daughter now lived in to check up on her. After turning their noses up at the tiny apartment Kristen inhabited, Mr. and Mrs. McGee drove Kristen into Chicago for some safe tourist dining on Navy Pier at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.

"I looked online at your finals examinations," Mr. McGee continued in between bites of coconut shrimp. "Straight A's. Not bad for a girl who once faked a stutter to get out of a class presentation."

"Yeah," Kristen replied, distracted, building a cheesy-mashed potato volcano with cocktail sauce lava. Adam was the one who gave her the idea for that particular maneuver and he had even offered to take the blame when her stutter ruse was discovered.

"Things are going so well," Mrs. McGee chirped over a salad. "You look refreshingly thin!"

"Janice Tatum, the girl who writes my English essays, showed me this great whole foods place," Kristen lied. That is, she lied about the whole foods, not about the fact that she hated English courses with every single fiber of her being.

"Oh dear, Kristine," Mrs. McGee coughed as she choked a little on a lettuce leaf. "That could get you in serious trouble!"

"Please. Like either of you have read Finnegan's Wake," Kristen deadpanned. She set down her fork.

"It's your money," Mr. McGee shrugged, continuing to gobble at his plate.

"Kent, aren't you concerned that our daughter is cheating to—"

"Have either of you talked to Cate Milligan lately?" Kristen asked. Her parents froze at exactly the same moment. "I'm just wondering what's up with Adam. Janice and I were thinking about taking a road trip up to Madison in August for the Great Taste of the Midwest beer craft festival. Adam said he was going to school there."

Her parents exchanged glances.

"Haven't you looked him up on Bookface, or whatever that social networking site is called?" Mrs. McGee asked.

"He doesn't have an account," Kristen lied again. Adam actually did have a Facebook account, but Kristen had un-friended all the residents of her hometown when she moved away. "I promise I won't drink," she added hopefully.

"Now that I don't believe for a second," Mr. McGee chuckled, but her mother laid a hand on his arm. Kristen realized that both her parents had a look on their faces, a look usually reserved for funerals or court dates.

"Well…" Mrs. McGee began.

"We didn't know whether or not to tell you," Mr. McGee said, nudging aside his plate so that he could take Kristen's hand.

"It hasn't been that long anyway," Mrs. McGee continued, sipping delicately at her strawberry margarita, something she did when she didn't want to talk.

"What hasn't been that long?" Kristen snapped.

"Cate Milligan is dead," Mr. McGee sighed. "Adam's missing."

* * *

Kristen didn't hear a whole lot after that. She realized she'd made a big mistake in deleting the hometown newsletter that popped up in her email every week.

Adam Milligan's disappearance was the talk of the town. He'd come home from school after his mom missed a shift at the hospital and found _parts_ of her stuffed in a ventilation duct beneath her bed. According to his dorm mate, Adam hadn't gone back to school after that, not even to get his stuff. Aside from the cops the last person to talk to him was his ex-girlfriend, Denise Hauer. That had been a few months ago. The only lead on his whereabouts was a meeting he'd had in Cousin Oliver's Diner with two out of town mechanics just before he disappeared.

After her parents had dropped her off and gone to their motel, Kristen dialed Adam's old phone number just to make sure. It was disconnected.

* * *

Adam's disappearance didn't alter her life much, except that she started to read the Windom town newsletter. That summer she worked full time as a waitress at the Olympia Diner, the dreams about Adam only coming to her every other week or so. Sometimes he appeared independent of Dream Number One or Two. Sometimes Dream Number One was narrated by lovely, optimistic Mama Cass music. Sometimes Kristen took sleeping pills and didn't remember her dreams.

When school started up again in the fall, she'd had enough of keeping them to herself. She told Janice.

"I met this girl in my Wicca group, she's from Africa, her dad's a shaman," Janice gushed, not even pausing from the correctional note she was writing to her Latin professor on her latest essay. "She was telling me about this dream root they have where you can, like, control your dreams and stuff."

"Can I have some of it?" Kristen asked.

"You'd have to come to gro-o-o-up," Janice taunted her in a sing-song voice, knowing full well that Kristen was an avowed agnostic with intense disdain for anything mystical (the exception being the Force, but only because Aunt Jayma had indoctrinated her with _Star Wars_ at a very early age).

"Fine," Kristen muttered. "I'll be okay as long as our periods don't sync up."

"But then we can buy tampons and chocolate in bulk!"

* * *

Janice's Wicca group was surprisingly accepting of Kristen. She never did get the dream root, but the baked goods present at every Wednesday night meeting more than made up for it. There were spells, but they were more holding hands and lighting incense than_ Charmed_. There was New Age empowerment crap, but it sounded less pretentious coming from Mandisa, the South African girl who led the group and still bore the scars of apartheid. Their parties were awesome and the anti-Thanksgiving celebration was the best ritual sacrifice with pie that Kristen had ever attended.

Only a few hardcore members seemed to believe they could perform "magic", but they never brought baked goods, so Kristen didn't pay any attention to them. That was until Janice started getting just as hardcore. It only became an issue when Janice got evicted and had to move in with Kristen.

"Am I seriously carrying a box of magical herbs?" Kristen asked between gritted teeth, climbing the fire escape to her apartment, hanging onto the freezing metal with one hand while the box was squeezed precariously under her arm.

"That's acacia leaf!" Janice scolded, her own arms stuffed with a bag of Celtic deity figures and a hamper full of clothes. She stopped to un-jam the window to Kristen's apartment. "They're burned on charcoal to develop—"

"No burning! You're not getting me evicted!" Kristen scolded.

"You're okay with cow's blood right?" Janice asked nonchalantly, stepping into Kristen's apartment and taking the box from Kristen's sore arms. Kristen stood on the fire escape for a few moments, catching her breath and processing the request.

"Seriously, cow's blood?" she asked after a moment.

"I won't leave it out or anything," Janice insisted. She dropped her stuff on the hideaway bed Kristen had prepared and plopped down, rolling around on thin, springy mattress. "It's secured in a manner much kinder than the slaughter of every bacon cheeseburger you eat."

The wind howled, blowing Kristen's red scarf into her face. As she was untangling it and spitting out her own hair, Janice came back to the window.

"I'm not gonna bite off your ear in your sleep, McG," she insisted. "It's the times we live in. Apocalypse is approaching and whatnot."

"I didn't know you were Mayan," Kristen teased. The two girls shared a giggle. "Guess it's not any creepier than Scientology or Catholicism," she relented.

"Come inside," Janice urged, skipping over to unpack her things. "You'll get frostbite."

Kristen hesitated, but only for a second. Janice was her best friend. Friends accept each other's quirks.

* * *

That night, Dream Number One recurred, in Dolby Digital Surround Sound. Kristen woke up cold, sweaty and gasping. Janice teased her about it for a week and told the entire Wicca group about it, leaving out the Adam aspect. The group declared Kristen the Gabrielle to Janice's Xena.

Dream Number Two recurred about a month later, but this time the ending changed. When Adam was ripped from the car, it wasn't by two shadowy figures; it was by a large strong man whom Kristen could barely see. He was completely concealed by the blinding white light that accompanied his entrance.

When Kristen woke up, she got a call from her mother. Aunt Jayma was dead and Kristen needed to come home for the funeral.


	2. Lassie Brings a Girl and a Dead Guy Home

A/N: Your reviews are made of win with a side of EPIC and they bring joy to my heart.

I'm sorry if Kristen gets a little annoying toward the end of the chapter. But she starts the chapter on the verge of an emotional breakdown, then all this angel/demon stuff gets dumped on her. I decided it was in keeping with her character to get a bit hysterical. She starts to sound a little like Jay of "Jay and Silent Bob".

Not to sound defensive, but I just feel like assuring any skeptics: this story is not _all _about The Girl. And it won't consist of a utilitarian dialogue rehash of "The Point of No Return" with a girl written in. Although I'm writing this on the fly (scary for someone like me, who likes outlines), I have a general backstory and an idea of where it's going. Just beware: major alterations to the last five episodes take place, some from Sam and Dean's POV, some from Adam and Kristen's. I should probably add "AU" to the summary at some point...

On a lighter note, Jake Abel fans: Did you bother seeing Percy Jackson just because he was in it? I did, but I walked out just before the end so I could pretend that his character won. Does that make me a bad person?

* * *

**Chapter One: Lassie Brings a Girl and a Dead Guy Home**

* * *

Mr. and Mrs. McGee, in their grief, forgot that their daughter was poor now. Kristen couldn't even afford a one way plane ticket, so Janice had to front the cash for Kristen's ticket home, in exchange for having Kristen take a statistics class in her name. Janice wanted to come along in support, but the thought of staying a week at Windom's Super 8 motel and missing classes seemed to dissuade her.

Kristen sat in the airport terminal for the better part of two hours while her flight was delayed due to weather conditions. Apparently there was a lot of storming and lightning over St. Paul.

Once she boarded the plane, Kristen vowed not to sleep. She chewed enough gum to make a ball the size of her fist and when the plane experienced turbulence, she held back the hair of the old woman next to her as the old woman threw up her English muffin.

The lightning seemed to have abated by the time the plane landed in St. Paul. It took Kristen nearly an hour to find a cabbie willing to take her all the way to Windom without cash up front. He tossed her one suitcase in the trunk and soon the cab had jerked out of the city into the countryside.

The Minnesota 60 was pure Midwestern scenery, green fields (which were very really rather brown of late) and small patches of trees (many of which were charred from lightning), with the occasional rest stop (all of which were deserted). The rain pattered onto the car continually, never varying pace. Not even ten minutes into the trip, Kristen was asleep.

* * *

In the dream that came this time, Adam and Kristen were sitting in Mr. Shoemaker's sophomore English class. Shoemaker's mustache was buzzing, like it was full of bees. Adam leaned forward in his chair and blew on Kristen's ear, bored out of his mind. Almost like a reflex, Kristen took her copy of _Bulfinch's Mythology_ and tapped it on his head with some force.

Mr. Shoemaker turned toward the chalkboard. Adam snatched the textbook from Kristen's hand and held it under his desk. Kristen turned and mouthed frantically for him to give it back. Very amused with himself, Adam gave her a toothy grin and shook his head.

Mr. Shoemaker's mustache stopped buzzing. Kristen turned her head toward the front to see their teacher had disappeared, as had the rest of the class and the classroom setting. She was in a clearing, a forest clearing she recognized from just outside her hometown

In Mr. Shoemaker's place was a shining figure. There was a harsh ringing sound in Kristen's ears that got louder and louder and louder—

"We're here. That'll be 360 dollars."

* * *

Mr. and Mrs. McGee had already left by the time Kristen walked in the door, to retrieve Aunt Jayma's body. She had died in San Diego, in the recent earthquake.

Kristen still had no idea why Grandma Addison was insisting Jayma be buried in Windom. It didn't make sense; Jayma hated Windom more than Kristen did. Jayma didn't know anyone in Windom.

That didn't stop their kitchen counter from being piled high with casseroles.

Kristen spent about an hour exchanging heaving, sobbing hugs with the various members of her extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins, her grandparents and at least two of her grandfather's illegitimate Canadian children. Olivia, Kristen's older sister, scurried about the house with the ferocity of a wild beast. She assigned Kristen to label the casseroles by type and planned meal time.

Mercifully alone, Kristen began crying over the kitchen sink. Her little brother Tanner appeared abruptly.

"Hey kid," Kristen sniffled, wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist. "Why are you in your pajamas?"

"Olive sent me to bed. I think she got confused cause the sun isn't out," the ten-year-old told her, shrugging. He hugged his big sister as hard as he could and babbled on while she labeled, telling her everything about his life he hadn't emailed already. He rattled off baseball statistics and complained about being picked third to last in gym class and whenever Kristen started crying, he patted her on the back.

The rain outside began to lighten, until it was little more than misty fog.

"I'm gonna go for a walk, just for a bit," she told Tanner when she was done cleaning the kitchen. She kissed him on the top of his head. "I'll be back in time to play something on Nintendo way past your real bed time."

"We'll be playing _Super Mario Galaxy_," he informed her somberly. "I'm going to smack you down like the hand of God."

* * *

Little had changed about Windom since Kristen had moved away.

The good side of town was still half a block from the bad side of town. There was still only one liquor store in town and since the owner was a family friend, there was little to no chance of Kristen being able to ease her grief with fruity vodka. Fewer people seemed to be out and about, but it _was_ unseasonably cold. Kristen noticed that there were fewer cows in the fields and she figured the whole town was just out looking for them.

Though Kristen set an ambling pace, even stopping to stare at the old movie theatre, the deserted Doose's market, and the defunct video rental store, she had a purpose. She was heading for the forest clearing from that stupid dream. Just to prove there wasn't anything mystical intruding in her life.

Jayma was dead. Adam was probably dead. Kristen needed to accept those facts before she left Windom.

* * *

Kristen yelped a little when, as she turned onto 9th Avenue, Noah Crosby was suddenly standing in front of her.

"S'up Kris!" he beamed, opening his massive arm span before her. Kristen accepted the hug awkwardly.

"Hey Noah," she greeted, muffled by his jersey pressing against her face. "How're you? How's your… y'know, kid…"

"His ma's got him for the week," he replied. He still had not let go. Kristen hung limply in his embrace for another thirty seconds. "I heard your aunt died, that's a real bummer." Noah's countenance was rather bubbly despite his words. "Wanna get a drink? I know a bartender who'll serve us, no ID needed."

"Thanks for the offer and all," Kristen said, staring at the sidewalk, "but I'm just going to go cry where no one can hear me."

Kristen sidestepped him and quickened her pace.

"It's not okay," Noah decided, easily matching her strides with his telephone pole legs. "What kind of friend would I be if I just left you alone in your time of, y'know, grief?"

"Exactly the kind of friend you've always been," Kristen muttered darkly.

Noah took no heed of her foul mood and kept following Kristen, even when they reached the tree line at the outskirts of town.

"I'm serious" Kristen told him, weaving her way through the trees in a purposefully crooked path. "I need to be alone."

"I'm just protecting you."

"If I see a bear, I'll speak slowly and back away."

"Ain't animals you should be scared of," Noah lectured. "The guy who owns Joe's Bar, they found him all torn up in the Milsat crypt. Bears didn't do that, isn't like they can break padlocks. And did you hear what happened to Adam Milligan's mom? Dude, they're still lookin' for the rest of her body—"

"_Holy shit, Noah, go away!"_ Kristen barked. She stood defiantly in front of him, arms crossed, refusing to move an inch until Noah was out of her eyesight.

It must've been the tears in her eyes, fogging her vision, but Kristen could swear she saw Noah's all-American blue eyes grow black for a second. He shrugged and backed away slowly, his dumb grin never completely sliding off of his face.

* * *

Once Noah was gone, Kristen heaved a sob and kept walking. The trees were still missing their leaves and the only thing she could see in all directions was the gray sky. The only greenery to be found was on the needles of the pine trees. Kristen's little jacket felt threadbare against the cold, dewy air. The clearing was maybe thirty steps ahead of her.

Something appeared in the sky and hurtled down, landing with an earth-shaking crash thirty steps ahead of Kristen. It struck so hard the trees around it lay flat. Lightning flashed in jagged yellow streaks, burning and mutilating whatever it hit. The ground became unsteady and Kristen was thrown from her feet, narrowly avoiding a plummeting elm tree.

She lay still until the aftershocks had subsided, maybe a minute. The sky was gray again. She could smell the faint odor of burning wood.

Lightning never strikes the same spot twice, Kristen reasoned. She repeated that to herself, under her breath, as she stood up and continued toward the clearing. Everything around the clearing was destroyed, charred and laying in ruin. Some of the trees had been torn from the ground and their roots were hanging in the air. The ground was the same as in her dream though, covered in dead leaves and muddy from the rainstorm. Kristen shrieked when it started to move. She stood, leaning against the remains of a tree, and watched in dismay as the mud at the center of the clearing pulsated up and down. It was slow at first, then frantic. Finally a hand broke through.

She knew it was Adam. It wasn't a realization, there was no whisper in her ear, nothing distinctive about the hand itself, but Kristen knew it was Adam's. She dropped to her knees and began hysterically clawing at the mud around him. Twigs and thistles tore into her forearms and palm. Her nails became packed with mud and shredded as she dug around Adam's hand, a hand that eventually became an arm. Kristen was careful never to scratch his skin. His fingertips brushed the tips of her hair as she dug deeper.

Kristen had gotten all the way to Adam's shoulder when two massive arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her away.

"Let go!" she screeched, twisting and thrashing as she was dragged away. She snapped her head back and her skull collided with the chin of her abductor. His grip loosened and Kristen jumped forward.

She turned to see Noah rubbing his jaw. It hadn't been a trick of the light; his eyes had no iris or pupil, they were simply coal black.

"Noah, what's happening?" Kristen asked, her voice trembling. "What's wrong with your eyes?"

Kristen saw stars when his fist smacked her cheekbone. Pain bloomed all through her temple and she stumbled back, landing with a thud against a tree stump. Tears of pain, rather than hysteria, gathered in the corners of her eyes. She looked up to see Noah looming above her, glowering at her with venom in his expression, baring his teeth like an animal.

* * *

In high school, Noah had been a very typical high school jock. Charismatic, jovial to a fault and a bit slow on the uptake. He was never quite aware of his popularity, which was probably the reason he'd deigned to go on a date with Kristen once. They'd gone to a burger joint, where they'd met a couple of his friends and ended up smoking pot on the football field late into the night. He was Kristen's first kiss and he tasted like salt and root beer. That he'd rather have taken beautiful Caroline Tydings to the prom rather than nerdy Kristen McGee was the only mark against him.

Kristen barely had time to consider this when Noah kneeled down, taking a fistful of her hair and bringing her face close to his.

"You were _not_ supposed to be this difficult," he hissed. Kristen closed her eyes, unable to stand the sight of his coal black eyes. "You're going to stop crying and come with me, before those dicks with wings get here."

"But, Adam…" Kristen said weakly. Noah took hold of her wrist and hauled Kristen to her feet.

"There's no time," he stated.

Behind Noah, a man in a tan trench coat appeared. His hand wrapped around Noah's neck before he could even react and Noah's body stiffened. The man brought his other palm to Noah's forehead and Noah was suddenly filled with white light, shining from his mouth and his eyes. He screamed and his grip on Kristen's arm tightened, then loosened. The light faded and Noah collapsed face first to the ground.

Kristen couldn't even make herself scream. Her throat was closed and choking on terror.

"What… how… I don't…" She sputtered, staring at Noah's limp form. "Are you gonna kill me?"

The man in the trench coat cocked his head at her, raising an eyebrow. He seemed to stare not at, but _through_ Kristen.

"Only if you give me a reason," he pronounced, his voice hard like gravel.

A groan emitted from the ground. Terror forgotten, Kristen raced back to Adam and took up her frantic digging again. The man in the trench coat calmly reached around her and took Adam's hand, lifting him with ease from the mud. He laid Adam on the ground, studying him.

"Who is this?" he asked. Kristen ignored him.

"Adam? Adam?" she sobbed, taking his face in her hands. Though he was covered in mud, Adam's features were clearer than in any dream Kristen had ever had and that realization only made her begin to sob. She felt for a pulse at Adam's neck and it was faint. "Adam, wake up!"

The man in the trench coat pulled one of Adam's arms over his shoulder and Kristen echoed the action.

"We have to go," he murmured. "The others will be here soon."

"Who?" Kristen asked through her hiccupping sobs. "Where are we go—?"

* * *

"The guy can speak English, but I swear, when there's danger he's like freaking Lassie!"

Dean uncapped his beer and downed half of it in his first gulp. It wasn't that he was just bored out of his mind waiting for Castiel to get back, it was that Sam and Bobby kept their eyes always on him. Dean had run through a million scenarios, none of which got him out of Bobby's house and to the angels. Even if Dean could win in a fist fight against Sam, it wasn't the way he wanted to say good-bye to his brother.

That, and the fact that even in a wheelchair, Bobby would still probably find some way to knock Dean unconscious.

"Maybe there isn't any danger," Sam suggested. He was flipping through some random book on some random mystical artifact that wasn't going to help them stop the Apocalypse. At the very most it made him look busy. "Maybe it's a lead on—"

There was another flurry of papers and Castiel was back.

"Help," he ordered, and the Winchesters rushed in from the kitchen. Over Castiel's shoulder was slung someone's limp, muddy form. Under the other shoulder was a bewildered girl. Castiel tossed the unconscious boy on the cot by the window and the girl toppled down to the cot with him, clutching her stomach.

"Boys!" Bobby called, wheeling himself out from his desk to look at Castiel's luggage. "Who is it?"

He looked up to see both Winchesters staring open-mouthed at the boy on the bed. The brothers often experienced emotions in tandem when confronted by shocking revelations, and this was no exception. Any relief at seeing their brother alive again was quashed by the realization churning in their stomachs that Adam was back on earth for the Apocalypse. Resurrection in the Winchester family could also be seen as shorthand for "Some supernatural force needs to screw with you for a bit."

"She called him Adam," Castiel supplied, gesturing to the girl.

"Adam. That's our brother," Sam said gravely. Adam was even wearing the clothes they'd burned him in, a beige jacket, a blue hoodie and jeans. The outfit he'd been eaten alive in.

"Cas, what the hell?" Dean growled, but the angel merely shook his head.

"Holy shit," the girl cried, hyperventilating. She held her hand over her mouth. "Oh my God…"

"He's on vacation," Dean said. Never taking his eyes off of Adam, Dean grabbed an urn off of a shelf and handed it to the girl, where she promptly threw up. "Hope you didn't need that for anything."

"Thanks for the consideration," Bobby snapped, glaring at the elder Winchester even as he watched the girl cough and hack, shaking violently.

"It was angels," Castiel interjected, adding another layer of dread to the proceedings.

"Angels?" Sam asked. "What would they want with our brother?"

"Adam doesn't have any brothers!"

All the men in the room stared at the unidentified girl on the cot. She appeared to be done choking on her stomach bile and was clutching the urn with white-knuckled hands.

"How the fuck did I get here?" she shrieked, staring from one to another of the men in complete bewilderment, her eyes wide as saucers and her face ruddy from crying. "Where the fuck am I? Who the fuck are you people? Why the fuck are you talking about angels? What the fuck is going on?"

"Got quite the little mouth on her, doesn't she?" Bobby observed, noticing her dirt-caked, bleeding arms.

The girl ignored him. She set down the urn and stood up on legs which seemed to shake and wobble dangerously even as she advanced towards Castiel.

"You killed Noah," she accused, her voice cracking.

"I killed a demon," Castiel stated simply.

"_There's no such thing as demons!_" the girl screeched. "The guy you killed was named Noah, he was a running back in high school, he got a C+ in calculus, and he has a son, _a six-month-old son!_"

"Cas, what's with the damsel?" Dean groaned.

"She was digging him up," Castiel said, gesturing to Adam. "A demon tried to abduct her."

"So the demons are in on this too," Sam sighed, rubbing his temples.

"No he didn't! He's not a demon! What the fuck is wrong with all of you?"

"Maybe we could give her The Talk later," Sam suggested.

He glanced at Castiel, mimicking the action of two fingers pressed to his forehead. The angel nodded in understanding and advanced on the girl. She tried to clamber away, but when Castiel touched her, she fell backward limply into Dean's arms. Castiel tugged her from Dean's hold and picked her up bridal style. He strode out the living room, through the kitchen and down to the basement.

"Angel powers: a date rapist's dream," Dean muttered. He was about to take another sip of his beer when he sniffed something different about the room. "… Does anyone smell egg casserole?"

All three men grimaced and looked at the urn. Bobby shook his head and returned to his desk. Dean and Sam looked each other in the eye and raised their fists three times. Dean picked scissors; for once, Sam picked paper. He took the urn and tossed it in the sink just as Castiel was coming back up the stairs.

"You put her in the panic room?" Sam said incredulously.

"We'll need to interrogate her," the angel informed him. It seemed like a little bit of overkill, but Castiel sounded very firm on the subject. "She knew exactly where your brother was buried."

"She acted pretty clueless," Sam said as they went back to the living room, where Bobby and Dean were still staring pensively at Adam. "How do you know she's a threat?"

"I don't. I know one thing for sure," Castiel elucidated. "We need to hide your brother, now."

Castiel stepped over to the bed and leaned over Adam's unconscious form. He laid his palm flat against Adam's chest and gold light emitted from his finger tips. Beneath his hold, Adam writhed and drew breath, crying out in pain as Enochian sigils were carved into his ribs.

Adam Milligan was alive again.


	3. The Denominators vs The Black Bears

This decision was only recently made, but I decided it just made sense: look forward to a reappearance of Papa Winchester. Jeffrey Dean Morgan's schedule may have prevented him from returning to the show, but that doesn't mean he can't appear in my mind! Bwahahahaha—**[evil laugh devolves into coughing and hacking and awkward silence.]** Anyway, to be noted:

—The scenes in this chapter sort of weave in and out of the scenes from 5x18. I can add captions or something if it gets confusing for anyone.

—The implication from the dress Kristen wears at the end of the chapter is that it belonged to Bobby's wife. I saw a chance for painful nostalgia and I thought, ahoy!

—I promise, as I go on, there will be more scenes of all the Winchester boys together, especially once we get this "OMFG Mike wants to wear Adam to prom!" business out of the way. Moderate angst and major bonding, ahoy!

—I got a bit nervous about writing the Kristen/Adam reunion scene because even though it's in third person, it's centered on Adam's perspective. I tried not to go overboard, but in my experience, guys _do_ like breasts that much. I cut it short because this chapter ran a bit long, but Adam and Sam will pick up their conversation next chapter.

—Minor change that probably won't affect the overall story: I never saw the chemistry between Lisa and Dean. To me, that storyline was all about Ben. Cassie from Season 1, now there were some awesome sparks (and I actually enjoyed the Ghost Truck episode). I'm also a fan of the actress who played her, Megalyn Echikunwoke. So, in my fic/universe, she's the one Dean said good-bye to.

—Yes, I got the slushie idea from _Glee_. I think getting slushied would be a brilliant form of high school torture.

—Does anyone else find it infuriating to write dialogue for Sam and Dean without being able to add all of Jared and Jensen's inflections? Grrr!

—Morkhan, I did look him up on the Percy Jackson wiki! The character sounds a lot more interesting than the screenwriters allowed for. I suppose Gods are the original deadbeat dads. Your phrasing cracks me up, which is why I added a reference within this chapter...

* * *

**Chapter Two: "The Windom High Denominators" Versus "The Windom High School Black Bear Baseball Team"**

* * *

"And where the hell is Zachariah?"

At the mere mention of that prick, Sam Winchester's blood began to boil. He hated Zachariah almost as much as he hated Lucifer and not just because the former had given him stage four lung cancer once. Zachariah's conniving and manipulating ways were calculated toward and responsible for the state of hopelessness he found Dean in now. It was now clear that Zachariah wasn't going to stop at an emotionally wasted Dean, no, he was going to bring Adam into the mix. Innocent, sad-eyed Adam, who'd already gotten eaten alive just for being their blood.

Unbeknownst to Dean, Sam had decided to take a mainstream approach to controlling his anger. At least, he'd found an anger management blog that he read regularly and gave fairly good tips. He tried deep breathing; he tried telling himself that getting angry and yelling at Adam was not the correct way to channel his rage; he even tried counting to ten in his head.

But none of that worked, so Sam pivoted on his heel and left the room, shoving open the door to the porch and seating himself on the steps until he could form thoughts without the image of impaling Zachariah's eyes on a spike.

"What's his deal?" Adam asked, as he, Dean, Bobby and Castiel stared at the empty spot where Sam had stood.

"He's just thinkin' about the last time we saw good old Zach," Dean explained. He dragged a chair over, flipped it around and straddled it. He looked hard into Adam's resentful eyes. "Wanna explain why you and Zachariah are besties all of the sudden?"

"I've never met him," Adam said. He sat up a little straighter, squaring his shoulders, never once faltering from Dean's gaze.

_He's John's boy all right_, Bobby thought to himself. He cleared his throat to get Dean's attention.

"Maybe Adam wants to get cleaned up before he tells us all about his resurrection," Bobby suggested. Dean frowned and opened his mouth to speak, but Bobby held up his hand in a gesture of silence and turned to Adam. "Shower's upstairs, third door on your right. I'm sure your brother'll lend you some clothes."

Bobby glared at Dean as he said that. Dean tightened his fists, pursed his lips, and then smiled at his brother. He pushed away the chair.

"Sure will…" he said, heading toward the door.

"Adam, do you know a girl?" Castiel asked. "5'7'', long dark hair, green eyes? She was at your burial site."

"I've been dead," Adam retorted, rising from the bed. He sidestepped Castiel and started up the stairs. "I don't know anyone."

* * *

Dean passed Sam on the porch on his way to the Impala.

"You still wanna say yes?" Sam asked bitterly.

Dean ignored him, ripping open the back door of the Impala. He shoved aside some old Arby's wrappers to get to the compartment inside the seat where he and Sam stashed their clothes. A brief memory of his summer spent as a coyote smuggling illegal immigrants across the border for cash popped into his head.

"The angels brought him back to use against us," Sam continued. "You said it yourself: he was in a better place. Now he's not."

Dean grabbed a pair of jeans, a black t-shirt and an olive green button up. He slammed the Impala's door and stomped back up the porch steps, past Sam.

"Are you really going to reward their outstanding douchery by giving them what they want?" Sam called over his shoulder.

Dean smashed the house door shut.

* * *

For the first time in nearly a year, Kristen McGee did not dream about Adam Milligan. Not that it changed the atmosphere of her dreamscape for the better.

Wherever this dream took place, it was dimly lit. Anguished cries sounded in the background as well as the scurrying of rats someplace near. The air smelled overwhelmingly of sulfur. Everything around her was gray concrete blocks and mounted on the walls were various instruments, spikes, chains, pliers, saws, axes, bottles of bubbling acid… Kristen remembered flipping through a book of medieval torture devices with Janice in the library once. She could even identify a few.

A rack was sitting against one wall and a spiked Judas chair opposite it.

Every surface was scalding to the touch and Kristen was walking around with bare feet. She swallowed her pain, whimpering only a little. Something wet fell on her nose. Kristen touched it and her hand came back bloody. She craned her head up to the ceiling and screamed when she saw suits of human skin hanging from the rafters. She stumbled back and tripped over a body.

Aunt Jayma was lying on the floor, naked. Kristen scrambled up to kneel next to her, the floor burning into her knees and shins. Jayma wouldn't wake up, no matter how hard Kristen shook her or pleaded for her to waken.

A man dressed in black came in. He reached through Kristen's form as though she were a ghost and flipped Jayma onto his back. He threw her onto the rack and began to whistle as he tied her down, a tune that Kristen recognized as Glenn Miller's song 'Jukebox Saturday Night'. The rack itself was hotter than the room and Jayma's skin sizzled when it made contact.

Kristen attacked the man, aiming her fists and her kicks as hard as she could at every part of him, but none of them connected with his body.

Jayma began to stir. Her eyes opened to slits and widened when she saw Kristen standing over her.

"James, what's happening?" Kristen begged. Her hands somehow made contact with Jayma's body and she smoothed hair out of her aunt's face.

"… shouldn't be here…" Jayma murmured, turning her head away.

"I oughtta mention it isn't your place to tell me where to be," the man laughed, tightening the straps around Jayma's wrists. His hands wandered all over her body as he traveled downward to secure her feet. Kristen roared in anger and tried to push his hands away, but again, her hands flew right through him.

"… saved you… go away…" Jayma urged Kristen.

"No one's gettin' saved down here," the man chuckled. With one hand, he undid his pants and with the other hand he climbed onto the rack, positioning himself over Jayma. "You least of all."

* * *

Judging from the muffled cries coming from the panic room when Sam descended the stairs, he guessed The Girl had woken up. He unlatched and unbolted the door and found her tossing and turning, her arms stretching out to grasp something. He tentatively reached out his arm and set it on her shoulder, squeezing it to urge her awake.

"Hey, hey…" he whispered in a soothing voice. "It's okay. Wake up, you're safe."

The Girl's eyes gradually blinked opened. Even in the dim light, Sam could see the skin around her right eye was beginning to turn purple. Her arms were in pretty bad shape too, dirty, bleeding, probably a little infected. The Girl jerked her shoulder away and rolled over the opposite side of the bed. When she stood up, she backed away from Sam.

"Is this a serial killer thing?" she whimpered. Her eyes darted all over the new surroundings and before Sam could say anything, she was weeping again and holding her arms over herself like a shield. "Are you like one of those rednecks who think Islamic terrorists are taking over the White House?" she babbled. "Are you going to rape me so I can bear your children to build a new separatist nation to fight Obama? Is this some sort of cell I'm going to spend the rest of my life in? Oh God, please don't torture me. Kill me and all, but I don't have a high pain tolerance…"

"No," Sam snorted, trying and failing to keep his laughter quelled. "I promise… I…" He put his hand over his mouth to hide his smile. "This isn't a serial killer/rape/separatist thing. If I were registered, I'd be a Democrat."

"Oh…" The Girl stopped crying. She sniffled a bit, staying flat against the wall. "Is Adam okay?"

"He's… well, he's physically unharmed," Sam conceded. Telling Adam not to say yes to Michael was turning out to be as useless as telling Dean the same thing. "How did you know he was buried there?"

"How did he get buried alive?" The Girl demanded. "And what did that freak do to Noah? I'm going to tear all of my hair out if I don't get answers!"

"You'll get them," Sam assured her. "You just need to stay calm."

The Girl just glared at Sam. Once he thought about, in the same circumstances, Sam figured he would've been just as enraged at that dismissal.

"Okay. Complete honesty, from here on out. We'll start with names," he proposed, standing up, staying on the opposite side of the bed. "I'm Sam."

"I'm Princess Leia," The Girl sneered. "That's all I'm telling you until I get a fucking explanation."

* * *

Adam had been dead this whole time. It made Kristen physically ill to think about it.

Demons, ghouls, sirens, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, shape shifters, succubae, djinns, changelings, zombies, even the freaking pagan gods were _real_. A little voice at the back of Kristen's head was hoping ewoks would be included on the list of things that were real, but Sam didn't mention them.

Angels were _real_. God was _real_ (which was perhaps the biggest shock, although Sam assured Kristen that the real God was far removed from the televangelist version). She recalled the Jehovah's Witness who stood on the steps of the Sgriccia building on campus and advised everyone to "repent, because the apocalypse is extremely nigh!" Turns out it was and the angels needed Adam to be a 'vessel'.

Noah had been possessed by a demon. He'd probably been dead long before that angel got a hold of him.

In return, Kristen told Sam _almost_ everything. She told him she'd been having recurring dreams about Adam, a boy she'd known from school (she neglected to mention that she had been an active participant in the dreams). She told him her aunt had just died and she'd been out for a walk when she discovered Adam trying to dig himself out of the ground.

Last but not least she told him about the dream she'd been having when he woke her up.

* * *

"Sounds like a pretty accurate description of Hell to me," Dean said. He and Castiel had entered the room. The Girl was seated on the bed next to Sam, holding her head in her hands as she described a vision she'd just had of her dead aunt.

At least she wasn't crying. Making women stop crying used to be a talent of the Winchester brothers, but their knack for it seemed to have faded over the years. It was annoying to say the least.

"Is my aunt in Hell?" she asked Sam, tears bubbling in her eyes again.

Sam grasped for something, anything to say, but he just kind of gaped at her.

"Y'know… it could have just been a bad dream," he finally lied, patting her on the back awkwardly. "You were a little traumatized today."

He rose from his seat on the bed and crossed the room to Dean and Castiel.

"She's been having visions," he said in a hushed tone, gesturing for the other two to lean in so as not to alert The Girl. "Adam in Heaven and probably her aunt in... I think she's for real, not allied with Heaven or Hell. I think the demon was there for Adam."

"That doesn't make any sense," Castiel objected. "The demons wouldn't be privy to anything the angels had planned and even if they did, they wouldn't be able to send someone so fast."

"Say Lucifer does hear about the resurrection," Dean conjectured, "wants Adam as a back-up for himself."

"Lucifer already has a replacement vessel," insisted Castiel. "The demon was trying to take _her_."

"… She's having visions?" Dean questioned after a second. His eyes met Sam's and they were thinking the same thing. "Could she be one of Yellow Eyes'…?"

"That's just it though," Sam said. "She's not having prophetic visions and she's not demonstrating any of the other abilities those kids had. Maybe she's just, I don't know, half psychic. Cas?"

"It's very rare," Castiel murmured, "but there are a few humans who can see into Heaven and Hell. They're the ones who tipped Heaven off about the demons breaking the first seal…" There was a pregnant pause as both Sam and Castiel looked in completely different directions just so they wouldn't have to look at Dean's crestfallen face as he was reminded, yet again, of his apocalyptic blood spilling session. "She's probably useless though," the angel continued. "Without exercising the ability or training it, they just see the afterlife of people they were intimate with, such as loved ones or family."

Something clicked in Sam's head. He turned to the girl.

"Is your name Kristen McGee?"

The Girl sighed heavily and nodded.

"Yeah. Princess Leia is my middle name, do not ask why…" She buried her face in her hands again.

"_You're_ Third Base McGee?" Dean chuckled, jumping on his go-to cure for guilt: overriding it with his libido. He looked the girl over, raising an eyebrow. "No hysteria, less mud… I can see it."

"That's gross Dean," Sam muttered. Dean shrugged, ignored him and continued to eye Kristen lewdly.

"If Adam's okay," Kristen said, walking over to them, "I'd like to go home now."

"No," Castiel declared. The Winchesters both raised an eyebrow at him. "Until we know the identity of that demon, you're safer here."

"I have a funeral to plan," she said quietly. "I have people to take care of."

Her eyes were welling up with tears again. Castiel opened his mouth to say something, but Sam cut him off. Castiel didn't seem to be annoyed by Kristen's incessant weeping (angelic patience and whatnot), so he probably wasn't going to help suppress it.

"Kristen, believe me," Sam rushed to assure her, taking her shoulders in his hands, rubbing her arms comfortingly. "The best thing you can do for your family is to stay safe so that they don't have to plan another funeral. This is the safest place for you in the whole Midwest right now."

"Cas can check on your family for you, no extra cost," Dean added. He looked to the angel to see him glaring with the same enraged scowl he'd been using all day.

"And so I will," Castiel agreed. "Kristen, Sam… Get out."

It took a minute, but at last Sam understood his meaning. He urged Kristen out the door, sparing a guilty glance at Dean.

"You are not serious about locking me in here," Dean growled, marching toward the door. Castiel stood in his way, blocking it with the full height of his vessel, knowing that Dean didn't stand a chance against his hard-like-marble physique.

"As long as I walk this earth, you will not give yourself over to Michael," the angel vowed, stepping out and shutting the door, telekinetically latching and bolting it.

"Let me out of here you son of a bitch!" Dean barked, banging on the door. "You hear me? Get back here! _Sam!_"

* * *

Castiel disappeared the moment Kristen gave him the address of her Windom family home.

Kristen had to listen to Dean's banging and cursing and shouting all throughout her shower. The upstairs shower only worked on and off, but Kristen was desperate, so Sam gave her the use of a nozzle in the basement that hung over a drain in the floor and had no shower curtain. He'd been kind enough to bring down a towel and a replacement outfit, a navy blue dress with short sleeves and white cuffs, accompanied by a white cardigan.

"You know the 1950's ended fifty years ago, right?" Kristen asked, holding the dress up to the light. She barely had enough dignity left to bite back a comment about how the dress was probably for a skinnier woman.

Sam had simply smiled and nodded.

"Yeah, well, just don't mention that to Bobby."

It was only after the waves of frenzy and confusion had subsided that Kristen realized how grubby she'd gotten. She was covered in dirt head to toe, her face was purple from bruising and red from weeping, and her jeans, jacket and shirt had all been ripped and bloodied. The cuts on her arms were beginning to heal and puff up with irritation. Her sneakers were coated in mud and were somehow filled with dead leaves. Not to mention her BO was out of control.

The water was freezing, but Kristen relished the sting of it hitting her body, bringing every inch of her body fully awake. For a full year, she'd been trying to ward off sleep and it only made her more tired. She decided she was going to find out how one contracted insomnia and become an insomniac. As a clause of that decision, she was never going to let that creepy angel touch her again with his magic nighty-night fingers.

Her lack of sleep and the accompanying malnutrition _did_ miraculously allow her to squeeze into the dress, although the buttons at the top strained a bit at her breasts. The cardigan allowed her to cover up her arms and hands.

Using her sneakiest tip-toes, Kristen headed toward the stairs.

"Hey, Third Base McGee!" came a voice from the panic room. Kristen froze on the spot and considered pretending she hadn't heard him. "McGee, come on, I know you can hear me. Gimme a twirl."

"Why do you keep calling me 'third base'? Kristen asked. Her wet feet gathered dust as she crept over to the panic room's door. Through a thick pane of glass, she could see Dean's eyes, fixed on her with desperation.

"My, that dress looks fine on you," Dean proclaimed. "If I may say so, your curves fill it out in all the right places—"

"I'm not opening the door," Kristen said, turning back toward the stairs.

"You want to save Adam, right?"

Kristen froze again, her foot on the first step. She looked up at the door at the top of the stairs. Adam was up there. He was awake and alive and waiting for her on the other side of that door.

"Here's what happenes to an angel's vessel," Dean continued, his tone harsh. "If the angels get to him, Michael's going to wear him like that dress. Adam will be awake with no control over his body. And when Michael's fighting the devil, Adam is going to feel all of it. Every break, every burn. He's gonna get shredded and afterwards, he'll be less than a vegetable. He'll be hollow and lifeless. I can stop that."

Taking a deep breath, Kristen climbed the second stair.

"Cas told me what happened," Dean bellowed. "Anyone who's seen a Romero flick knows it's dumb to dig up someone in the ground, but you did it anyway. You care about Adam, way more than you'll cop to. I called you Third Base McGee because _that_ is Adam's version of Heaven, being with _you_. You wanna do what's right by him, let me out of here. Don't…" Dean's voice faltered and when he spoke again, his voice was barely audible over the iron door. "Don't let him take the fall for something I should've done a long time ago."

* * *

"What? We gonna hop in the family truckster? Pop on down to 'Wally World'?"

Adam watched Sam go from depressed and frustrated to bemused and eying him in a second.

"Tell you one thing," Sam said, taking a sip of his beer. "Attitude like that… you'd fit right in around here."

Adam couldn't tell whether the comment was flattering or infuriating. Until the angels showed up for their "Save the world" speech, he'd been blissfully unaware he had brothers. When he was younger, he definitely would've enjoyed having brothers, even if they were only around as frequently as his dad. He'd have had someone to play catch with and he probably would've known how to use a condom. Now he had brothers, he resented them with a fury and they wouldn't go away.

Sitting in some dark, gloomy house that was cluttered by parchment and weird artifacts and guns was not Adam's idea of a good last day on earth. Still, it beat his first last day.

When he'd emerged from the shower, Adam had taken a look at his face in the grimy mirror above the sink. He tried to picture it dead and lifeless. It hadn't been difficult. Compared to the ecstasy of heaven, which was growing fuzzier in his memory by the minute, the desolate reality of Earth was crushing him. He'd imagined waking up, fighting the devil in a miraculous blaze of battlefield glory, and finding his mother again.

Everything on Earth was so damn slow. His eyes wandered back to the door…

"Dude, no chance," Sam said, catching Adam's gaze. "I can take you down in fifteen different ways. And Bobby—"

"What's he gonna do, roll on me?" Adam gibed.

"Wouldn't put it past him," Sam said, shrugging.

Sam was a sasquatch. He reminded Adam of the first boy he had ever gotten into a fight with at school. His name was Riley Finn, it was the sixth-grade, and Riley was the tallest guy in the whole class. Riley had cut Adam in the lunch line for the third time that week and Adam had had enough. He got a suspension and bloody nose for his troubles. Fighting Sam to try to get out the door would likely bear similar consequences.

"Thing is," Sam began, and Adam groaned because he didn't want another lecture. He briefly considered locking himself in the basement with his other brother, who at least seemed less prone to talking out his issues. "I know you wanted a dad, but you didn't want ours. Dad taught Dean and me to be killers, to be like him, single-minded hunting machines. He left us alone in hotel rooms for weeks at a time. We couldn't cook, so we broke into vending machines. I went to, like, twelve different schools each year. Your mom ever hug you after you had a nightmare?"

Adam raised an eyebrow at the randomness of the question, but nodded.

"See, when I had a nightmare, even if Dad was there, he didn't hug me. He gave me a knife to put under my pillow. The way Dean and I grew up, it wasn't right. Maybe he realized that by the time he found out about you."

Sam leaned back in his chair and sipped his beer, staring off into space now.

"Maybe that's why he didn't trust us enough to know," he mused.

"I should be happy with my lot in life because Dad did a terrible job of raising you, is that what you're saying?" Adam asked, rolling his eyes.

"Dad didn't raise me," Sam replied. "Dean did."

"And look how well you turned out," Adam snapped. "You're still a hunter, right? A single-minded hunting machine?"

Sam was about to retort when something behind Adam caught his eye. Adam turned to see what it was and he saw Kristen standing in the doorway.

The first thing he noticed was that Real Life Kristen was almost as good as Heaven Kristen because Real Life Kristen wasn't wearing a bra. The dress she was wearing was unbuttoned, almost like a necessity, to the top of her ribcage and her breasts were spilling out of the dress rather magnificently in all their soft, pale goodness. Even better, she didn't have the modesty to use the sweater to, well, make them sweater puppies.

Though Adam Milligan had fondled a few breasts in his short life, the first were still the best.

Adam wasn't disappointed until he saw those breasts heave a sigh and he looked up at her face. Kristen was staring at him with those big green eyes. She was smiling hopefully; it unnerved him. He realized he'd grown hard and scooted closer to the table to conceal his lap.

"Kristen? What are you…?"

"Didn't we tell you?" Sam said in a tone that made Adam sure he was getting a kick out of this. "Kristen's the one who found you."

"Hey," was all Kristen could mutter. She stayed glued to her spot in the doorway.

"Hey," Adam echoed.

The two twenty-year-olds stared at each for a minute before looking away. In Heaven, Adam had been able to block out the ensuing humiliation of the prom night pregnancy scare. Not so much on earth and that was awkward. Sam seemed to pick up on that.

"That's all you have to say to each other?" he prodded, smiling.

Their graduation day argument was hurtling to the forefront of Adam's mind. He remembered going to Kristen's graduation party, sneaking into the country club, shouldering past all the richest people in town to find her. He remembered rehearsing his speech in his head a thousand times. It consisted of a pseudo-marriage proposal and the carefully worded vow that he wasn't going to be like his father or his mother for that matter. If she was indeed pregnant due to their mutual inability to handle birth control, their kid was going to grow up with two parents. Their child would know every second of its life that it was loved.

He also remembered what Kristen had said in response.

"Well, this is a more than a little mortifying," Adam said caustically, turning to Sam. "See, the last time we saw each other, Kristen told me she'd rather throw herself down a flight of stairs than bear my spawn and that I'd never be able to satisfy a woman."

That shut Sam up.

"So, Kristen, what's new with you?" Adam continued, turning back to Kristen. She folded her hands over her chest (which only served to deepen her cleavage line) and looked at the floor, her wet hair falling over her eyes. "Have you found a man up to the challenge?"

"I guess I get a little vicious when I'm stressed," she murmured. "I, uh, I kinda thought we were even when you had the entire baseball team slushie me."

"I didn't tell them to," Adam shot back. "Max decided to do that after the Denominators egged my house."

"That was Alice's idea," Kristen winced. "I swear."

"… You were 'slushied'?" Sam asked after a moment. Adam and Kristen groaned almost in unison.

"The school has this slushie machine and it only costs a quarter," Adam explained. "So if you're experiencing a dip in popularity, people will throw a slushie at you. Happened to me once or twice."

"It happened to me 36 times over the course of four years," Kristen added, "plus the thirty slushies of the Windom High baseball team after I graduated."

"Yeah," Adam snorted. Sam was pretty sure it was the first time Adam had smiled since he'd been resurrected. "You were a mathlete, what'd you expect?"

"I guess being resurrected by angels for a holy crusade to defeat the devil hasn't made you any less of an ass," she scolded, narrowing her eyes. She whirled on her heel and put her hand on the door before turning back to Sam. "Is it safe to go outside?"

"Better if you stay in," Sam said sheepishly.

Kristen strode past them into the living room and sank onto the couch in a huff. Adam downed the rest of his beer.

"Do you have _anything_ stronger?"


	4. The Effects of Whiskey and Pennyroyal

Morkhan: I have seriously considered doing a one-piece where Finn finds out that his mom lied about his dad dying in the Gulf War and discovers that his dad is actually some dude named John Winchester. And then he'd sing that REO Speedwagon song and Dean would cry a tear for Jo.

I miss Jo! She may have started off annoying, but her mother was effin' amazing and by "Born Under a Bad Sign" and "Abandon All Hope", Jo had had become a pretty good character, even if her development was off-screen. Plus Alona Tal kicks ass. If someone came out with a Jo Harvelle comic, I'd read it. Hell, I'd write it if someone gave me a contract and a deadline.

Netflix is streaming _UP_ and I secretly wonder if, had a demon not possessed Bobby's wife, he'd have turned out like Carl.

I looked over this chapter at the myriad of pop culture references and I wonder if I need to get out more.

PS: I adore your reviews. Just thought I'd let you know.

**

* * *

**

Chapter Three: The Effects of Whiskey and Pennyroyal Tea (Not Recommended Taken Together)

* * *

Sam broke into Dean's whiskey stash for Adam's benefit. He thought about how the last time he'd done it, Jo and Ellen had gone up against Castiel in a drinking contest at the very kitchen table he sat at now. Sam, at the time, had wondered if angels could even get inebriated. Now he knew they could, at least after having their purpose and meaning yanked out from under their feet.

He needed to connect with Adam, so Sam got out the shot glasses again. He lined five in front of Adam and five in front of himself.

"Do I have to have a certain alcohol threshold to be one of you?" Adam asked.

"Well, since you can't please a woman, you're on probation," Sam informed him. He held up the first shot, downed it, and set it on the table. "Pending a review of the evidence, of course."

Adam glared at him and downed all his shots without blinking. Sam was a little nervous about this endeavor, because Dean was the one who could really hold his liquor. It was a relatively good thing that Dean had been resurrected so many times; otherwise his liver would have been completely gone.

"Here's what I don't get," Sam said, taking his second shot. "This girl is your idea of Heaven. Now you're back and you can't spare her a civil word."

"So she tripped over a hole in the ground, and I happened to be in it," Adam said. "Doesn't mean she gives a damn about me. She made that pretty clear."

"You shoulda seen her when she got here, man," Sam told him. "I thought she was going to blow a gasket over you."

Sam took his third shot. Adam pursed his lips and said nothing.

"I spent three years at Stanford," Sam divulged, "and I was dating this girl my freshman year. She was a sorority chick and we were at this Big Game party. We were stone drunk and we're upstairs, getting, y'know…" Sam could only hope that his face wasn't getting red as he retold this story for the second time in his life. He downed his fourth shot. "Just as she gets my jeans off, she pukes all over the bed. And that's not even the worst part. She wanted to _keep going_."

The story had the intended effect: Adam frowned and his nose wrinkled up in disgust, but he started laughing. Sam drank his final shot and slammed it on the table.

* * *

The old guy kept _staring_ at her. It was beyond creepy. He just stole little glances here and there, and sure, maybe her cleavage was asking for it, but he must've been old enough to be her grandfather.

There was nothing on TV, but Kristen kept it at a low volume and flipped channels every so often. She found the Turner Classic Movies channel and she settled on that. The movie playing was a western, something about an old guy's ranch getting raided and his two sons going after the blood thirsty gang that kidnapped his grandson, Little Jake. After the big red box with the ransom in it was revealed to be empty, Kristen flipped the channel.

"Turn it back," grumbled the old guy, Bobby.

"It's just some old guy shooting people. He can't even aim," Kristen insisted.

"_Some_ old guy?" Bobby looked up from his book, snapped it shut and gave Kristen the mother of all stank eyes. "Are you telling me you don't have the decency to know who John Wayne is?"

"Wasn't he, like, in the Civil War or something?"

For a second, Kristen honestly thought Bobby was going to wheel over and strangle her. He was flexing his fists.

"Well then how about you listen to me because this is my house," he said between gritted teeth. Kristen did as she was told.

"… It's not like I _want_ to be here, in this shithole, worrying about the fucking apoc—"

"While you're wearing that dress," Bobby cut her off, "you'll purport yourself like a lady. Understood? And button the hell up!"

* * *

"Dad kicked you out for getting _in_ to Stanford?"

Adam and Sam were on their third round of shots.

"Gave me five minutes to pack up my stuff," Sam told him, "and told me not to come back."

"You're shitting me," Adam said, holding the shot glass to his lips, wondering if he was too buzzed to take even one more sip.

Every single drop burned through his mouth and his esophagus but it felt so damn clear. Resurrection, Adam was realizing, wasn't a jumpstart. It was a slow process where he started out numb and woke up fuzzy, groggy, and the longer he stayed alive, the sharper everything came into focus. Whiskey burned, light glared, and Adam realized he could feel the blood pumping through his veins as though the individual blood cells were straining at the walls of his body. He wondered if this was what Frankenstein's monster had felt like when it came to life.

Stupid literature references. Now he was thinking about the time Mr. Shoemaker made the class watch the Christopher Lee version of Frankenstein, while Adam and his best friend, Max, sat at the back of the room and finished every line of dialogue with something like, "My fighting Uruk-hai, whom do you serve?" Kristen, who had been disallowed from seeing _Lord of the Rings_ by her aunt, kept shushing them whenever 'Count Dooku' was onscreen.

"I shit you not," Sam assured, slurring his 's' just a bit. "You know what though, I just, I talked to him about before he…" Sam leaned his head on his hand, studying the shot glass in his other hand. "After my mom died, he was just scared all of the time. Happiness, health, honest freaking communication, it all just took a back seat to what he was scared of. I think, like, with you—" Sam gestured to Adam "—every second he spent with you, something was following him, something that could hurt you. With me, y'know, the demons and monsters already knew I was there. Every second alone was a second he couldn't look after me."

Sam downed the shot and relished it.

"He was back in the jungle," Adam supplied, setting his shot back on the table.

"He told you about 'Nam?" Sam asked excitedly.

"Not every detail," Adam replied, "but he told me about the battle of Hue City."

"Ah man, that's the best story!" Adam was beginning to think Sam couldn't hold his liquor. Or, at least, getting buzzed just improved his social skills dramatically. "Did he tell you the part about how they got the command to withdraw—?"

"And that crazy guy everyone called Bunny, he just kept shooting," Adam picked up, nodding. "So Big Harold hit him on the head and carried him the rest of the battle—"

"And he ran around attracting snipers so Dad could shoot 'em," Sam finished. "Then when Bunny wakes up, he tells this story about how three Vietnamese guys cornered him and that's how he got the bump on his head!" Both men shared a laugh. "Dude, I got to meet Big Harold once! Dad wasn't exaggerating, that guy is seven feet tall."

"Ahem."

The two men looked toward the living room to see Kristen standing behind Sam.

"That angel guy has been gone for a while," she muttered awkwardly. "It just seems like if everything was okay, I'd be at home playing _Super Mario Galaxy_."

"That… is an excellent point," Sam conceded. He looked at the clock on the oven; he and Adam had been talking for the better part of an hour, meaning that Castiel had been gone for just a bit longer than that. Even cut off from Heaven, Castiel was still proficient at tracking and killing demons and he didn't take his time to do it.

Sam rose from his chair, pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and pressed speed dial number three.

"You're calling a messenger of Heaven via cell phone?" Adam asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Cas is kind of unique," Sam said, smiling. After a moment, he realized Kristen was staring at him, her face creased with worry and her big green eyes shining in the dim light, as though she were about to start tearing up or something…

Sam shot her a quick smile of encouragement and backed out of the kitchen, out the door and to the porch, leaving Kristen and Adam alone. Adam took another shot.

"Glad to see you're bonding," Kristen said quietly.

Adam ignored her for another shot, staring straight ahead at Sam's seat. He drummed his fingers on the table, straining his ears to hear Sam's conversation.

"I mean, Olivia and I have our moments," Kristen continued, "but it's usually when mom makes us go shopping. Other than that, we're just on opposite sides of everything… That guy, Bobby, seems like the kind of guy that would send children out to hunt snipes. Although, I guess that movie came out after you… Your brothers seem pretty nice, y'know, weird mystical hunting business aside. I mean, Sam told me about God thing and I freaked out a little because I never paid attention in church, never mind that all the other things about ghosts and demons… Are you seriously giving me the silent treatment?" she finally asked. "What is this, fourth grade gym class?"

"I still maintain that it was your fault we lost the kickball tournament," Adam shrugged.

"_I am sorry_ about what I said at graduation," Kristen said. "But maybe in face of your second coming, we could put that behind us."

"Got that message loud and clear," Adam retorted, leaning back in his chair to face Kristen. "You want out of here, away from me, I get it. See you in the aftermath."

"I was stressed," Kristen pleaded. "I didn't mean what I said."

"I have slightly more urgent things to think about," Adam said, waving her away. "Fighting the devil and all that."

"You can't take ten seconds to forgive me?"

"No," Adam said with chilly finality.

"You're being incredibly childish," Kristen insisted, folding her arms over her chest. The sleeves of the cardigan slid up and out of the corner of his eye, Adam could see the cuts and bruises running up and down her arms. "I didn't mean any of the things I said. There was a room full of people congratulating me on this future that I didn't even choose—"

"Poor you, getting into MIT," Adam muttered.

"I was stressed and terrified," Kristen said, "and I took it out on you and I'm sorry."

"Do you even understand how selfish you sound right now?" Adam seethed, shooting up from his seat. At full height he was six inches taller than Kristen and she felt that as he loomed over her. "That's the thing that pisses me off the most, your poor little rich girl act. Being handed everything is so terrible. Everyone around you is so much less, you don't even have to think about how you treat them. God forbid a poor bastard like me steps onto your turf—"

"I didn't mean any of it—" Kristen kept insisting, her lower lip quivering.

"Then why the hell did you say it in the first place?" Adam roared.

"Adam, I had a miscarriage that morning," Kristen confessed in a small voice. She drew a deep breath before she was calm enough to elaborate. "When you came in, chattering on and on about marriage and babies, I lost it. I'm sorry."

Sam re-entered the kitchen from the porch, pocketing his cell phone.

"Cas said your neighborhood's all clear," he informed Kristen. "The only reason he's taking so long is that your grandmother seems very resolved on making him some tea."

Kristen pivoted on her heel and sped through the living room, fluttering up to the top of the staircase where she promptly sat on the top step and gathered her knees to her chest. After a few seconds, Adam went into the living room and rolled onto the cot by the window, rubbing his temples. Sam followed him.

"Did I miss something?"

* * *

Castiel slipped his cell phone back in the pocket of his trench coat. He turned back toward the doorway to see a young boy with floppy brown hair staring at him. The boy's eyes widened and he turned and fled.

It took all of fifteen minutes to figure out that Noah Crosby had been the only demon in the town. Castiel's last stop was Kristen's home, as Sam had informed him that more than a few people ripe for possession would be gathered there for the mourning ritual.

The sight that had greeted Castiel when he appeared on the doorstep of the McGee household was one of chaos and panic. One man, the patriarch, was ready to send out a search party to look for Kristen, as she hadn't come home in hours and no one in town had seen her. A shrill girl who appeared to be Kristen's sister ordered the angel off of her front door until he blurted out that Kristen was safe. The entire family greeted him with hostility and the patriarch threatened him with castration.

Everyone calmed down when a woman with silver hair strode forward and beckoned Castiel into the house. She took him by the hand and led him past the shocked family members, assuring them all that Kristen was all right and not to worry, she just needed to speak with this strange man in the den. Alone.

No one in the house was possessed, but the grandmother, Addison, had insisted he stay for tea. Castiel didn't object; psychic gifts tended to be hereditary. As Kristen herself didn't seem to be aware of any abilities, an ancestor was the best way to tell.

Addison entered the room a moment after his phone call with Sam ended, a glimmering silver tea tray rattling in her hands. She set it on a table, slid into one of the leather chairs on either side and gestured for Castiel to do the same. Castiel stared at her for a moment before she shrugged and delicately poured tea into the two cups.

"You're a Seer," he stated.

Addison sipped at her tea, silent as a ghost.

"Hardly," she sighed. "My many times great-grandmother, Comtess Nicole de Lancret, _she_ was a Seer. She traversed Heaven as though it was the New World and she was Ponce de Leon. And she was burned at the stake for her troubles.

"My line has experienced this gift, this misery, since before the birth of Christ. There may be other lines, but ours were the best. It afflicts one girl every generation, but their men found if they were beaten or at least distracted by bearing children, the problem could fade away. I had the great distinction of seeing into the beyond during the Great War, when I was still a child. By necessity I had to master my Sight just to stay out of Heaven or Hell, they were bursting at the seams.

"But it was my daughter Jayma who embraced her Sight."

Addison took another silent sip of her tea.

"Kristen doesn't know any of this. I'd prefer she remain in the dark and away from the Winchester boys," Addison declared, setting down her tea cup. "It is John Winchester's son, isn't it?"

"The angels brought him back," Castiel said. "Kristen saw it."

"I'll thank you to return her soon," Addison said. It was an order disguised as a request; but then what human would try to order around an angel?

"Your daughter, Jayma, she died very recently," confirmed Castiel. "I need to know who she was allied with."

"I haven't a clue," Addison replied with a very slight shrug of her shoulders. "If I tell you what I know, will your return my granddaughter directly?"

"You will tell me what you know and I will return her as I see fit," Castiel instructed, taking a few steps toward her. The silver-haired woman shrank a bit in her seat, but nodded.

"Fine," she stated, lips in a thin line. She set down her tea cup on the table, crossed her legs and began her tale anew. "I knew the moment John Winchester rolled into this town twenty years ago that he'd cause me pain. Even when angels were content to stay in Heaven and Hell hadn't spit out more than a few demons, I could hear them whispering about him. Cate Milligan may have been the one who bore his child, but my daughter Jayma, who had been attending Harvard I'll have you know, was the one who followed him out of town.

"Even when their little fling was over, she wandered this continent, mixing with all manner of characters. Luckily for me, she never brought them home. I think Kristen became her favorite niece because Jayma figured out very early on that Kristen was similarly gifted. When I forbade her from teaching Kristen, Jayma didn't come home for ten years. I promised myself that I wouldn't allow Kristen to follow Jayma's path, so I did everything I could to prevent Kristen from figuring it out herself. I immersed her in the mortal world, I took her abroad to Paris and London and Milan. I encouraged her pursuit of the mathematical field and I got her into MIT. It's very prestigious," Addison assured Castiel, who didn't really care.

"So when John's boy got her pregnant, I saw all my plans collapsing around her like déjà vu. I called Jayma, to harangue her, but she'd had a change of heart. She came home for Kristen's graduation and gave the girl some pennyroyal tea. Kristen miscarried. I suppose that's the last time I really saw my daughter. Jayma was indistinct on the details, but she had it on very good authority that the apocalypse was due to start soon. She saw the righteous man broken… John's eldest son as I understand it."

Castiel nodded. Addison took another sip of tea. The lamp light was glowing upward, highlighting the numerous wrinkles and the tired arch of Addison's brows.

"Jayma promised me she was going to have someone look after Kristen while she was away from home, a little witch by the name of Janice…"

That was all Castiel needed to hear. An angel in his garrison, Sachiel, had been assigned the task of stopping a witch named Janice Tatem from breaking one of the 66 Seals. He had failed. Sachiel had been in league with Uriel and as of Castiel's betrayal, Sachiel hadn't been found by Heaven.

That revelation cleared up Jayma's alliances quite well. There was still one thing bothering Castiel.

"If you knew about John Winchester, then you knew about the ghouls," Castiel asserted. "You had the chance to spare Cate and Adam Milligan extremely painful deaths."

"It didn't warrant my involvement," Addison snapped defensively. "I may sound cruel, but I wanted to protect Kristen. The less creatures who know of my family's capabilities, the better."

"That wasn't why you stayed quiet," Castiel growled, advancing slowly on the old woman until he hovered above her. She slid down in the seat and looked away from his probing, unblinking eyes.

"Adam had already tried to ruin Kristen's life once," the silver-haired woman admitted, her voice cracking. "I didn't want another Winchester involved with another one of my girls. Not that it mattered. I did everything to offer them the world. They spurned my gifts."

The old woman was clutching her mouth, eyes closed, weeping mutely.

Castiel's phone rang, the shrill ringtone a welcome relief to the taut silence.

"What now?" Castiel ground out into the phone.

"It's Sam. Dean escaped. I think Kristen let him out."

* * *

"You may have noticed he's got a slight height advantage!"

Sam's panic mode was in full swing. He looked from Bobby to Adam's still form on the cot. Dean had been gone for at least an hour maybe more. Sam was kicking himself for leaving Kristen alone downstairs with Dean and his desperation.

"Adam," Sam barked. Adam, who'd probably been near sleep, sighed and sat up, rubbing his eyes. Sam tossed him Bobby's jacket. "We're goin' to get Dean. Come on."


	5. Ezekiel Phones Home For A Welcome Wagon

Streetwise: Oh, Teal. I'm glad the Internet is such a small place. Or at least that Adam lovers are such an isolated community that we can always find our real life counterparts. In unrelated news, I cleaned out my bed and would like you to live under it so that we may be closer. Think about it. I'd make a good landlord.

If you're ever writing a SPN fic and you can't get in the mood, just listen to Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back in Town". It's good old rock music and just reminds me of the brothers.

This chapter doesn't serve a whole lot of purpose except to finish out the events of 5x19 "The Point of No Return" and show that the action is going completely off the rails. Also, I added the Ezekiel section because I realized that in my story, Dean leaves a lot earlier than he does in the actual episode, so some sort of delay was needed. Plus, Ezekiel's belt buckle exists in real life. It is terrifying, but it gave me inspiration.

**

* * *

**

Chapter Four: Ezekiel Phones Home For A Welcome Wagon

* * *

"Should you be driving?" Adam asked.

"I'm fine," Sam guaranteed, ushering his little brother out the door. Realizing Dean was about to give up and become an angel condom had sobered Sam up a bit.

"You realize if the angels are there," Adam said, "I'm going to say yes."

Sam had been expecting that response, but that didn't lessen the blow when he heard it. He briefly reconsidered taking Adam along for the ride. Taking a flight risk on a search party mission would look pretty stupid to the layman.

Who was he kidding? It _was_ an incredibly stupid idea, but he needed to gain Adam's loyaltysomehow.

"No you won't," Sam replied simply, opening the driver side door of the Impala. Dean hadn't had the heart to rip open his baby to do the necessary hotwiring. A red Camry was missing from the lot a couple heaps down, so Sam noted that it was the kind of car he should be looking for. He looked back at the porch. Adam was standing there, dumbfounded, shrugging Bobby's dirt brown jacket onto his shoulders. "Push comes to shove; you'll make the right decision."

Sam shoved the key in the ignition and the engine roared to life. He sat there for a terrifying second before Adam finally swung into the shotgun seat next to him. Sam wheeled the Impala around and floored it down the dirt road that led to the exit of Bobby's salvage yard.

"Isn't fighting the devil the right decision?" Adam asked as they sped down the road and through the gate.

"Not by angel playbook rules," Sam told him. "An innocent bystander getting knifed, that's an ugly fight. But Zachariah and his band of dicks, they don't give a flying fuck about the planet or the people on it. If Michael and Lucifer have a final smack down, billions of people will suffer and die."

"Won't it result in heaven on earth anyway?" Adam pointed out. The car jolted as they transitioned from the dirt path to the concrete of the main road.

"The angels don't live here. This isn't their home. Humanity shouldn't have to put up with _their_ shit, _their_ baggage," Sam said. "Doesn't free will, doesn't choice matter to you at all?"

"I choose to see my mother again," Adam stated.

"Adam, you will," Sam tried to assure him. "The angels don't control Heaven and they sure as hell don't get to choose who goes there. It's just a collection of your memories, your greatest hits."

"Yeah, well, y'know what my last memory is?" Adam said, and Sam's stomach knotted, because he knew what it must have been. "It's my mother slashing open my stomach and eating my liver. I don't want to…"

Adam's voice faded and he clenched his fists. Knowing that it was a ghoul wearing his mom's face didn't alter the experience. His brain was involuntarily bringing every detail of that horrible night back to him and for one repulsive moment, it all flashed through his memory.

Coming home, his mother's frantic call echoing in his head. Finding her in the kitchen with a bald guy in glasses, both of them with lurid grins plastered on their face. His mother, taking his baseball bat to his head. Waking up in a dark tomb, strapped in a stone coffin. Moonlight shining in from the ceiling, illuminating his mother's face as she smiled and her hands, hands that had stitched his wounds and held him close, hands that dug through his innards. Blood staining his mother's lips, _his_ blood. Pain screaming through every fiber of his body. Hours of torment later, his blood abating, his skin freezing, the agony fading into comfortable numbness…

Sam stared straight ahead at the road.

"I _can't_ live with that memory," Adam concluded.

Sam sighed, taking a sharp right turn into Sioux Falls. Bobby had long ago informed him that there was a Jehovah's Witnesses church somewhere on the outskirts of the town, so there were bound to be a few of them wandering around. Castiel had gone straight there and hopefully already scoped out the church. It was too dark out for door-to-dooring, but since the angels had tapped the Jehovah's Witness network, Sam and Dean had found many hanging out at motels. Sam decided to check out those first.

"Adam," he began, "I get it, I—"

"_You_ _sure as fuck don't get it!_" Adam bellowed.

"Who do you think they tried to eat next?" Sam yelled back. He turned to face Adam and the Impala almost swerved off the road. Sam jerked it back and after a deep couple of breaths, continued. "And Dean, once we find him, he'll have plenty to tell you about how he sold his soul and spent four months in hell being tortured. Let me tell you, Hell makes Guantanamo Bay look like Disneyland. Believe me, if _anyone_ gets it, it's us, your brothers."

There was a red light. Sam pumped the brake and the Impala stopped halfway into the intersection. He got a few honks and flipped off, but Sam was studying Adam's reaction. The younger man's fists were clenched again, his nostrils flared in anger, his brows knitted together and his body was trembling in ire.

"Adam…"

"The light's green," Adam mumbled. Sam pressed the gas pedal lightly and started to study the sidewalk, scanning for bearded weirdos or his skulking brother. After a few seconds, Adam spoke again. "So what are we supposed to do, even if we do find Dean?"

"Hit him," Sam said, sighing in relief. Adam was proving to be just as angry and resilient as the rest of the family. "Also, don't talk to any Jehovah's Witnesses," Sam warned.

Adam gave a half-hearted glance out the window before leaning over to turn on the radio. It was some popular rock song, with a deep-voiced singer on an acoustic guitar. Sam leaned over and flipped it to whatever tape was in the cassette player. It was Metallica and the song playing was "Hit the Lights". He gambled that if Dean heard the song emanating from the car, it might at least trigger some memory good enough to make Dean reconsider saying yes.

"Seriously?" Adam said.

"Driver picks the music," Sam informed him, "shotgun shuts his cakehole."

* * *

"The end is nigh! The apocalypse is upon us! The angels talk to me and asked me to talk to you!"

Ezekiel Hiram had on a special belt buckle. It was a brass depiction of the crucifixion, the two thieves on either side of Jesus, Simon the denier, three Roman guards, and the Virgin Mary screaming and beating her breasts as her son was sacrificed to pay for the sins of humankind. Although Ezekiel's father considered such a lavish accessory vain, Ezekiel wore it on his off nights.

Off nights were nights when Ezekiel got the distinct impression that no one was listening to him. Ever since the angels had appeared to the congregation, Ezekiel had preached with renewed fervor. The apocalypse was upon them and they needed to save as many people through the righteous path as possible.

It was nights like tonight that made Ezekiel feel like he would fail to save just one person. Sure, most nights people stared straight ahead so that they wouldn't have to talk to him or they spit on him and yelled at and egged him. But he'd been dealing with that since he was eight and father took him to preach the gospel for the first time.

It may have been a blasphemous wish, but Ezekiel did not care whether or not he could find the man the angels needed, Dean Winchester. Ezekiel just wanted to save one person.

He'd been at his post, outside of the Korova Bar, for the better part of two days and had not saved anyone. He took another deep breath.

"The apocalypse is—"

"Hey."

A man with a strong jaw, wearing a beat-up green coat marched straight up to Ezekiel. Ezekiel braced himself for a beating and was vaguely surprised when the man just stood in front of him. Maybe this was someone willing to listen, someone who could be saved.

"I'm Dean Winchester," the man announced. "Do you know who I am?"

Ezekiel's mood had never changed so drastically in the space of three seconds.

"Dear God!" he exclaimed in awe, his eyes widening.

"I'll take that as a yes," Dean Winchester said, raising an eyebrow. "Listen I need you to get your angel buddies and let 'em know I'm here."

Ezekiel dropped to his knees, opening his arms to the sky, his entire body surging with pure euphoria. The Lord had chosen _him_, of _all_ his followers, for a part, however small, in his war against Satan. He was to deliver Dean Winchester to the angels!

"Our Father, who art in Heaven," Ezekiel cried out, "hallowed by thy name! Thy kingdom come, thy word be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven—"

Dean Winchester snorted.

"Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen."

Ezekiel bowed his head and clasped his hands beneath his chin.

"No one's answering dude," Dean Winchester said after a few minutes.

"I was praying to God," Ezekiel told him, rising to his feet. His hands dove into his pockets and he withdrew his Bible. "To summon the angels, we have a chant…" Ezekiel flipped through the pages a few times, looking for a particular scrap of paper. It wasn't between the pages of his Bible, so he searched his pockets again. He surveilled the ground around him, but it wasn't there either. "I may have left it in my other Bible…" he admitted.

"How many Bibles do you need?" Dean Winchester asked incredulously. "They all say the same thing!"

"There are different translations—" Ezekiel insisted, still searching, his euphoria fading into panic.

"_Just get them here!_"

Dean Winchester, the soon-to-be savior, had to give Ezekiel quarters for the pay phone so he could call his father. Emmanuel Harim was mightily displeased that his son had faltered at such a defining moment of his service to the Lord, but agreed to chant for the angels and direct them on to Ezekiel.

"He's calling them. Right now…" Ezekiel assured Dean Winchester, who rolled his eyes, punched a door, and paced for a few minutes. He was fuming so terribly that Ezekiel briefly wondered why God would make this man the key to saving the world, but thought better of questioning it. He didn't want to get punched. "I think I'll recite the psalms!" Ezekiel decided, wanting to brighten the mood.

"You _really_ don't have to," Dean Winchester grumbled.

"They will provide you with strength in your hour of battle!" Ezekiel declared, desperate to make up for his blunder. "_Blessed is the man who doesn't walk_—"

"You pray too loud."

A man appeared as though from nowhere and tapped Ezekiel on the forehead. Ezekiel went out cold.

* * *

"Is that a drunk Jehovah's Witness?"

Sam's head snapped to Adam's side of the car. On the sidewalk, a man in a black coat and tie with a crazy beard was passed out in front of the Korova Bar. Sam swerved the Impala around the car in the next lane and pulled the nearest parking spot, leaving the car crooked at a significant angle. He and Adam rushed across the street, disregarding a hoard of angry drivers. Sam knelt down next to the unconscious man on the sidewalk and rolled him over to check his pulse; very much alive.

This looked a lot like Castiel's handiwork, but could just as easily have been Zachariah's. Sam began swiveling his head in a panic, but Dean was nowhere to be found.

"Dean, you son of a bitch, you have got to be here…" Sam muttered under his breath.

There steam smoking out of an alley nearby. The sound of bodies smacking against brick walls echoed out.

"I gave _everything_ for you," bellowed a deep voice, "and this is what you give me?"

Several loud grunts followed, a punch, and someone was pushed into a chain link fence. Adam and Sam rushed into the alley to see Dean coughing blood and clutching his stomach as Castiel advanced on him. Sam rushed forward to place himself between his brother and the angel; Adam stayed put at the mouth of the alley, his legs frozen as he watched the proceedings.

"Cas, stop!" Sam planted himself firmly in front of Dean. His stance didn't seem to assuage Castiel's fury. The angel's eyes widened in surprise at Sam's appearance and then narrowed.

"This isn't his decision," Castiel growled, stepping toward Sam until their faces were an inch away. Sam didn't back down.

"Actually it is, Cas," Sam disagreed. "He's the one who says yes or no."

"I have made my friggin' decision," Dean coughed, spitting a trail of blood over his neck and shirt. He yanked himself into a sitting position against the chain link fence. "Sammy, why don't you take your own advice?"

Sam knelt down by Dean's side and threw his brother's arm over his shoulder, feeling a couple of cracked ribs in Dean's chest. He made eye contact with Adam and nodded to him, beckoning him to Dean's other side. _This is it_, Sam thought to himself. Adam had had his chance to run when Sam had stepped in between Castiel and Dean. They'd been adequately distracted, but Adam had stayed, whether by loyalty or fear of Castiel's wrath, he was still standing there.

"Adam," Sam called, as the younger man was still studying the scene, Dean bruised and Castiel pacing in fury. After a moment, Adam bypassed Castiel and lifted Dean's other arm over his shoulder. Dean winced a bit, but sagged gratefully against his brothers' frames, his head hanging low as he hacked up another mouthful of blood. "Dean, take half a second and stop trying to sacrifice yourself for a change," Sam continued. "We agreed, we promised that we were going to stick together. We're all we've got. The angels aren't getting you, they aren't getting me, and they're not getting Adam."

Sam looked up to Castiel.

"Cas, just beam us outta here," he instructed. "You can find something to punch later."

The angel glowered but nodded. The next moment he was gone.

* * *

But Dean, Sam, and Adam were still in the alley.

"Where'd he go?" Adam asked.

"I sent him home," answered a honeyed voice.

Silhouetted at the mouth of the alley, in his navy blue suit and ice blue tie, hands clasped in front of him, was Zachariah. He sauntered toward the brothers.

"We've been looking for Castiel all this time and now that he's back, I can only imagine the welcome wagon he's gonna be riding."

Zachariah nodded and Sam felt himself lifted into the air and thrown back against the chain link fence. Some of the metal twisted from the fence and knotted itself around his neck tightly. Sam groped at it, trapped with his lanky legs swinging through the air.

"Sam, how's it hanging?" Zachariah chuckled. He turned to Adam, who was staggering under the weight of Dean's limp form. "You weren't where we told you to be kid."

"Stop hurting him," Adam demanded as he watched Sam struggling. "I'm here now—"

"Now I don't have to deal with that dumb, slack-jawed look on your face when I tell you that we only needed you for bait anyway," Zachariah enthused. He raised a finger at Adam. The next moment, Adam collapsed under Dean as he felt the capillaries in his lungs began bursting one by one. He began to choke as blood funneled into his lung cavities.

"Dean, this is a doozy of a decision," Zachariah said, taking Dean's arm and easily pulling him up, shoving him against the alley wall. "I want to hear that wonderful yes, but watching you choke in agony while your brothers suffer is just so entertaining. It's a cosmic reward for my _infinite_ fucking patience."

"Stop it," Dean begged, growing lightheaded from the pain as Zachariah pinned him against the wall, putting pressure on his cracked ribs. "Yes. I'm saying yes. Call him down."

"Oh he's on his way," Zachariah informed him blithely. He leaned down to meet Dean's eyes. "I just wanted to deliver you personally. My status has been somewhat diminished of late, but after I turn you into Michael, I am gonna be—"

"Expendable," Dean spat, making sure he hacked some blood onto Zachariah's hand.

Zachariah narrowed his eyes and cocked his head to the side, wiping his hand on the breast of his suit.

"Excuse me?" he sneered, eying Dean with the predatory instinct of a lioness about to present a kill to the pride leader.

"I'm saying yes," Dean snarled, sparing a glance at Sam and Adam. Sam was pulling at the metal around his neck, but he couldn't choke out a single word. Adam was in too much pain to pay any attention, his labored breaths only drawing out more blood. Dean drew his posture straight and stared Zachariah straight in the eyes. "But before Michael gets one piece of this sweet ass, he has to turn you into a piece of charcoal."

"Boss man's not gonna go for that, Dean," Zachariah smirked, taking a hold of Dean's collar and slamming him against the wall. Dean's skull banged against the brick and he saw stars as he slid to the ground.

"I sure am," popped a voice from behind Zachariah.

Zachariah's body seized as a blade was driven between his shoulder blades, his eyes and mouth filling with white light. The fence loosened itself from around Sam's neck and he dropped to the ground next to Adam, whose lungs ceased to bleed.

Just before Dean's eyes fluttered shut, he looked up to see the angel Gabriel grasping Zachariah's shoulder before he pulled the archangel blade out of Zachariah's empty vessel, coated in blood.

"Hey brother," Gabriel whispered in a sing-song voice as Zachariah's body crumpled to the ground and the imprint of his wings scorched the concrete.

* * *

When Dean woke up, he was riding shotgun in his own car. He could hear Adam and Sam's voices in the back. With slight horror, Dean turned to see Gabriel at the wheel of his precious Impala. He was pretty sure his heart ceased to beat for a moment.

"Pull over," Dean rasped, tasting blood caked to the roof of his mouth.

"What's the matter?" Gabriel cooed. "'Fraid I won't treat her right? Cause let me tell you, I have a way with the ladies…" Gabriel patted the dashboard affectionately and Dean felt a little nauseous. "This might help reassure you."

Gabriel tapped Dean's forehead with the tip of his middle finger. A familiar feeling of warmth spread throughout Dean's body as his head wound faded into fuzziness, his cracked ribs fused back together, and the congealed blood evaporated from his mouth. He tensed and untensed his body to check on the progress of its healing to find he felt rather invigorated. He sat up straight in the seat and glanced out the window to see dust clouds billowing around the car. Out beyond the road laid a sand floor stretching out and blending with the pitch black horizon.

"Where are we?"

"We are in six-hours-till-sunny Arizona," Gabriel announced. "I'd have stayed roundabouts of South Dakota except that Mike was pretty close on our tail."

"You're singing a different tune these days," Dean pointed out, remembering their last meeting in the TV Land warehouse.

"Took some time off from, you know, my day job," Gabriel explained, winking at Dean. He took his hands off of the wheel and settled down into the seat, letting the Impala drive itself. It took all of Dean's resistance not to grab onto the wheel right then. "You were right. I was scared. Luckily for you guys, I balled up. Just in the nick of time by the looks of it."

"Thanks for that," Sam offered, leaning forward from the backseat.

"No problem-o," Gabriel shrugged.

"So what's the plan now?" Adam inquired.

"Well, aren't you just a feisty little soldier," Gabriel said exuberantly. He turned all the way around and leaned over the seat to offer his hand to Adam. "We haven't been properly introduced: You're the littlest Winchester from what I hear. I'm the archangel Gabriel."

"Another angel?" Adam asked, frowning. He left Gabriel's hand hanging in the air and narrowed his eyes.

"Not exactly," Sam assured him. "I mean, he's on our side." There was an awkward beat of silence. "… Right?"

"Team Screw-The-Macho-Pissing-Contest, here I am, ready and willing!" Gabriel exclaimed. "Still trying to kill Lucifer?"

"About that: the Colt doesn't kill him," Sam explained. Gabriel rolled his eyes and mouthed 'Duh.' "You know anything that might?"

"An archangel's blade wielded by an archangel," Gabriel said. "But they don't leave those lying around just anywhere. That's why I keep mine up my sleeve."

Gabriel held up his right arm in the air and then tipped it down at an angle. Out slid the long, silver blade with a globular hilt, the one he'd used to kill Zachariah. The blood was gone and the blade gleamed even in the darkness. Gabriel caught the hilt and expertly twirled it around a few times in his hand, the blade forming a long arch that almost caught Sam on the nose. He and Adam slid back in their seats.

"And that'll kill the devil?" Dean asked, his eyes still on the driverless steering wheel.

"Just as soon as we get close enough to shiv his ass," Gabriel answered. "Got any thoughts on bait or am I gonna have to do all the planning?"

Sam and Dean exchanged looks. Bobby's efforts to track Lucifer had proven useless especially now that Lucifer was concerned with keeping the two Horsemen he had left on earth long enough to wipe out humanity. The one card they had to play was Sam's role as Lucifer's vessel. Lucifer had made it perfectly clear he wanted Sam before he faced off with Michael and it was probably the only thing that could lure him close enough for Gabriel to get to him. It was the last thing Dean wanted to dangle in front of Lucifer.

It was on the tip of Dean's tongue to express doubt in his brother. He'd wanted to say yes to Michael because at this point in time, he didn't believe Sam had what it took to resist Lucifer. But hope was starting to bloom in the corner of Dean's mind. With Gabriel on their side, someone who knew the tricks of both Heaven and Hell and had the strength to stand against them, Dean owed it to Sam to give this plan a shot.

"I have to be a part of this." Adam interjected, jerking Sam and Dean from their mutual contemplation.

"Adam—" Sam started.

"Those fuckers lied to me," seethed Adam, "and now that I'm alive again, this is my home. I _want_ to fight."

"Sam and I have been training for this our whole lives," Dean replied. "You could get hurt."

"How many times do I have to explain the eaten alive thing?" Adam exclaimed, rolling his eyes. "I want in. Bobby's in a wheelchair, but he's still useful."

"Bobby's been at this for a while—" Sam started to explain, but he was interrupted once again. Gabriel snapped his fingers and suddenly, even though Sam could feel his mouth moving, his voice was absent.

"Don't underestimate the littlest brother," Gabriel ordered. "We've always got tricks." He held his hand out for Adam again, this time balled up in a fist. "Pound it kid."

Adam looked from Sam to Dean for instruction, still wary of Gabriel. Sam tried to say "Go ahead," but all that came out was a hoarse cough. Dean rolled his eyes and turned to the front. Adam half-heartedly tapped his fist against Gabriel's.

"I like you," Gabriel decided. "But you know what you need, kid? Boot camp."

"This isn't gonna turn into an 80's training montage or an episode of _Buffy_, is it?" Dean asked, remembering with slight horror the last time they'd met Gabriel, facing off on a Japanese game show with their nuts at stake.

Gabriel grinned, taking the wheel back in his hands and flooring the gas pedal.

"Are you saying you _don't_ want some blonde cheerleaders around?"


	6. Get Your Ribs! Tangy and Delicious!

A/N: Castiel's fate will be revealed next chapter, but like Dean said, don't piss off the nerd angels. This chapter is set up as a sort of medium between what Gabriel does in 3x11 "Mystery Spot" and 5x08 "Changing Channels".

I'm late on updating because I had family in town. The original ending was supposed to take place in _Star Wars: A New Hope_, but I changed it after spending an excruciating evening of babysitting and watching a certain girl-meets-vampire movie. I know this fic's existence is predicated on trying to improve Adam's fate, but what Gabriel does to him in this chapter is pretty terrible… But I couldn't help it. I just couldn't. It was like a sick, twisted compulsion. I hated myself even as I wrote it, but… so tempting. So hilarious. Sparkly Winchesters!

The only thing that really matters about this chapter is that Sam, Dean, and Adam are bonding. I think it's going to be mostly Sam and Adam throughout the entire story because judging from 4x19 "Jump The Shark", Sam would be really excited about getting to take on the older brother role. Take a minute for me to be pretentious: I also think that Dean would have difficulty accepting Adam into the fold because to Dean, Adam's very existence stands as proof that John didn't trust his sons and shines an excessively negative light on John's parenting, something that Sam has already dealt with and moved on from.

We also learn something sort of interesting about Gabriel that may or may not be a pivotal plot point.

Maat: I adore you. I'm normally super anal retentive about grammar and spelling, and I read everything over nine hundred times before I'm okay with it. I can't believe I never noticed the different spellings. My mind: You blew it. Feel free to point out any future mistakes and know that I only have gratitude. My usual beta is in Egypt right now.

Jake Abel Fan Girl: I intentionally left out Kristen's description because I wanted to force myself to distinguish her more on personality than looks, but in my head, she's been modeled on a couple of different actresses like Olivia Thirlby (_Juno, The Wackness_) and Kat Dennings (_The House Bunny, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist_). But Lea Michele/Rachel Berry would actually be good as well. I got to see her perform in Spring Awakening about a month before she left the production, I sat in the second row and I have to say, she is just as cute in person as she is on screen. Those big brown eyes, the cute little nose… I might have a crush on her. Anyway, Adam and Kristen have some intimate scenes coming up, so I'll probably add more description then.

* * *

**Chapter Six: Ribs! Get Your Ribs! Tangy and Delicious!**

* * *

The three men saw the last of midnight Arizona right then. In a flash, they were somewhere sunny. They were no longer in the speeding Impala, they were standing in a courtyard.

"What happened?" Adam said, blinking disorientation out of his eyes. On his right stood Sam, on his left, Dean. They were positioned like teenage girls a clique, standing close together and hunched for cover.

Each of the brothers craned their necks to look at their new surroundings. The dirt beneath their feet was light and dry, swirling in the air as everyone in the yard stood around, pacing or kicking the ground out of boredom. On all sides stood an old brick building that resembled a fortress with massive oak doors and grime tinted windows. Behind them was a tall ring of shrubbery.

Sam looked down at what he was wearing. He, Dean, and Adam were all clothed in grubby military fatigues and combat boots. Around them stood guards. They wore gleaming white helmets, white belts, and white socks with… loafers, or something. It was old school. Sam would hazard a guess at World War II-era.

"I think we're in another one of Gabriel's after school specials," he whispered to his brothers. The explanation did nothing to illuminate Adam's understanding, so Sam elaborated. "Gabriel likes to, sort of—"

"Completely mind-fuck us," Dean hissed, looking around at the other people in military fatigues who were congregating in the yard. His heart rate blitzed when he realized he recognized every single person in the line. Some of them had once tried to kill Sam and Dean; most of them were dead.

"—impart wisdom on us," Sam continued, trying not to panic Adam. "Via pop culture. Or time loops," he grumbled.

"Sammy, any of these guys look eerily familiar?" Dean observed.

"Yeah," Sam nodded. He leaned back to observe the shrubbery and noticed that on the back of Adam's fatigues a large, white 'P' was painted on. It was on everyone's outfit. "Where are we?"

"Marston-Tyne Military Prison US Army ETO," Adam said. Sam raised an eyebrow at him and Adam pointed to a peeling wooden sign on a gate up ahead.

"Dude!" Dean exclaimed, snapping his fingers. Gone was the confusion; Sam could see from Dean's impish grin that wherever they were, Dean was excited about it. "We're one fourth of the Dirty Dozen!"

Sam and Adam had a moment of perplexed silence.

"… That sounds like a porno set on a farm," Adam commented.

"No, see," Dean backed away, gesturing at the other people, waving his arms with enthusiasm, "we're criminals who'll get pardoned if we assassinate a bunch of Germans!"

"How many of them survived?" Sam asked.

"One," Dean answered, still smiling.

A jeep had appeared at the gate. Out of it stepped a man with silver-white hair, a curious glint in his eye, and numerous stars and badges on his impeccable uniform, indicating he was decorated war veteran of high rank. One of the guards in the goofy white helmets shouted "FALL IN!" and all the prisoners in the yard lazily went about forming something that resembled a line as the guards hounded and pushed them.

Dean was so busy studying the setting, so familiar from when he'd last viewed 1967 war movie classic that Sam had to take his arm and yank him into the line.

"Old guy is named Major Reisman," Dean informed Sam via thin-lipped whispering. Major Reisman strolled straight up to Dean, sizing him up. The Winchesters sucked in their stomachs and mimicked the harsh stillness of everyone else in line. Sam elbowed Adam until he did the same. The fidgeting went unnoticed by the movie characters.

"_Dean Winchester_," the guard with the clipboard shouted. "_Started the apocalypse. Death by hanging_."

"You what?" Adam exclaimed, stepping out of line. Two of the white-helmeted guards came up and jerked him back into line, but his outburst went unnoticed by the Major.

"There's an explanation for that," Dean insisted, flummoxed not to have heard the original lines of the scene. The guard and Major Reisman moved on to Sam.

"_Sam Winchester. Released Lucifer. Death by hanging_."

"I thought we were fighting the Devil!" Adam growled through gritted teeth.

"We are," Sam insisted as the Major moved on down the line to Adam. "See, I killed a demon, which is usually a good thing—"

"_Adam Milligan. Impregnated a mathlete. Forty years hard labor._"

"You got Third Base McGee pregnant?" Dean chuckled, hazarding a guess that it was the nerd who'd been digging Adam out of the ground with her bare hands. Adam rolled his eyes, indicating the charge was with merit.

"_Jo Harvelle. Blew up a convenience store. Thirty years hard labor. Rufus Turner. Drunk and disorderly. Thirty years hard labor._"

"So what are we supposed to do?" Sam asked Dean, trying to shuffle away the pregnancy talk.

"Look at that," Dean instructed, pointing to the gun slung around the nearest white-helmeted guard. It was an M16 rifle, a gun that had only been in serious use for about 35 years, and probably hadn't even been thought of in the 1940's. "This is a World War II movie, but the tech's pretty modern."

"_Ash Campbell. Hacked into the CIA. Forty years hard labor. Gordon Walker. Murdered best friend. Death by hanging._"

"This guy, Gabriel," Adam asked in exasperation, "he actually expects us to go through training?"

"It'll be good for you kid," Dean decreed, sizing up the firepower of the guards. He was very gratified to see a Desert Eagle handgun in the holster of one particular guard to his left.

"_Anna Milton. Gave God the finger. Death by hanging. Jake Talley. Opened the gates of Hell. Death by hanging._"

"Am I going to die again?" Adam demanded.

"… Probably," Sam admitted, shivering as he had another flashback to Gabriel's Groundhog Day and the various ways Dean had died.

"At least I'll just get shot," Adam muttered.

"_Andrew Gallagher. Currently high as a kite—_"

"You know it!" the prisoner giggled.

"_THIRTY YEARS HARD LABOR!_"

"I miss that guy," Dean grinned, leaning forward to watch the commotion.

"_Ava Wilson. Killed a shit ton of people. Death by hanging. Victor Henricksen. An asshole. Forty years hard labor._"

"This is fun," Adam groused. "You allied us with a creepy puppet master angel and completely forgot to tell me you guys started the apocalypse. _Anything_ else I should know?"

Major Reisman ordered the guards to arrange the prisoners right to left by height. Sam got dragged down to the end before he could explain anything.

* * *

Adam eventually did hear the entire story, all the way from 1973 to the last victory the Winchester brothers could boast about, the defeat of the Famine.

Gabriel didn't keep them in _The Dirty Dozen_ for very long. Just as the criminals were preparing to make their descent into German lines, the creepy puppet master changed the battle plan. Dean woke up one morning and to his horror, he was in a plane. No amount of humming Metallica could assuage his fear once he realized he had a freaking _parachute_ strapped to his back.

Turned out that day was D-Day, June 6th, 1944. After a few days of wandering around war-torn France, Dean found Adam and Sam. It was at this point Adam had pointed out that they were now following the plot of the 2001 HBO miniseries "Band of Brothers", a series that detailed a company of paratroopers through a harsh European campaign. The brothers reluctantly slogged through the rest of the invasion of France and then spent a month in the marshes of Holland before they were trucked into the Ardennes forest.

It was on such a December morning in 1944, deep in the frozen forest of Belgium, that Dean Winchester woke up. He was so frosty and his foxhole was so stiff that he might as well have been sleeping in a freezer box. What freaked him out most was that although he was sleeping in the ground, there were no bugs, like they'd gone south for the winter.

Dean realized he could hear Sam's voice, faraway…

"_We're under sporadic artillery fire, General. We're taking a lot of hits and we have no aid station. We've run out of food, we have no winter clothes and we have little or no ammo. Line's spread so thin that the enemy wanders into our CP using our slit trenches, sir. We just can't cover the line._"

The title General, for whatever reason, urged Dean into action. He flailed out of his sleeping position, knocking over his helmet/coffee pot. He took the corner of the tarp draped over his foxhole and flung it away, dusting up a layer of snow. He looked up to see Sam rolling his eyes while three other men, Colonel Sink, Major Strayer, and the General studied Dean with raised eyebrows.

"_Good morning Captain Nixon,_" greeted the expertly mustached Colonel Sink. He gestured to the man on his right. "_Got_ _anything to add for General McAuliffe?_"

"_General…_" Dean trailed off before remembering he had something to complain about, something about the perimeter. He scrambled up out of the foxhole, his joints and muscles still frozen in sleep. "_Uh, yes, sir. General, I took a walk on our line at about zero three hundred last night, couldn't find the 501st on our right flank. I tied in with a squad from our second platoon,_" Dean continued, gesturing to an extra sad-eyed Adam, who was off to the side. "_But sir, we've got some considerable gaps in our perimeter._"

"_I don't have enough people sir,_" Major Strayer added. "_We're spread too damn thin._"

"_Hold the line Colonel,_" General McAuliffe snapped simply. He turned back toward his jeep, Colonel Sink following suit. "_Close the gaps,_" he instructed as he climbed in. "_This goddamn fog won't lift anytime soon, so you can forget about air cover. Your first battalion just pulled out of Foy, Krauts on their tail. Tanks, artillery, they got no back-up. There's a lot of shit headed this way."_

The jeep lurched into action and carried both men far away from the battle zone. Dean was almost too tired to be mad about their lack of aid and climbed back into his foxhole, muttering about sons of bitches.

Sam returned to his foxhole as well, scouring his brain for what happened next in the _Band of Brothers_ book. Working under the assumption that Gabriel intended to have them complete the entirety of Easy Company's campaign, Sam figured they had to take the town of Foy back from the Germans, then Noville, another town Sam couldn't remember the name of, and then they'd be trucked to the city of Haguenau.

Ordinarily, Sam and Dean would have fought tooth and nail against Gabriel's methods of teaching them lessons. But being straight up soldiers had perks. Dean was especially enjoying the grateful European women and had taken up the challenge of getting past a girdle with great fervor. For Sam, he had time to think and strategize.

Truth be told, Sam was so grateful that Gabriel was on their side that he refrained from talking strategy with the archangel so as not to push his buttons. There was an unspoken understanding that Gabriel had essentially agreed to kill his brother. The only problem with that was how to first _find_ Lucifer. They had few leads on demons close to Lucifer since the Crowley debacle and even fewer leads on what Lucifer was currently up to. He seemed to content to sit back and let Pestilence and Death wreak their havoc.

"Hey, Sam…" Adam had followed Sam back to the foxhole and was standing tentatively next to him. He was rubbing his hands together and shifting his weight from one leg to another, trying to stay warm. He spoke to his brother with familiarity tempered by the fact that when the other characters were around, Sam was the commander. "_Can I scrounge a bandage from your aid-kit?_"

"_How are you fixed?_" Sam asked, pulling the tiny plastic box from a pocket in his shirt and handing it off.

"_No aid kit, no bandages, practically no morphine,_" Adam told him. "_Tried to find my way up to third battalion lookin' for supplies, but I got lost._ Can't tell one pile of exploded trees from another."

"You okay?" Sam inquired.

Adam put the aid-kit in his bag and pondered the question, blowing a stream of lukewarm air over his hands in an effort to heat them. Boot camp had been a surprisingly fantastic experience. Kind of like baseball camp, only with guns. Just as John had taken some time to show Adam how to pitch a ball properly, Sam had taken it upon himself to coach Adam in aiming a gun, running while dodging bullets and punching a man.

Once Gabriel changed the scenery on them, Adam felt even more at ease. His best friend in high school, Max Lerman, had been a war movie freak and so Adam had viewed the Band of Brothers miniseries a few times. Not only did he have a good handle on where their company was and what they were doing, but he knew which of the men whose bleeding bodies he tended to were going to live.

"I'm fine," Adam replied to Sam after a moment. "Getting bombed and freezing my ass off aside, being a medic makes sense."

"You were pre-med, right?"

Adam nodded.

"I was gonna work in the ER, like my mom," he elaborated. Blood and intestines didn't faze him; in his youth, he'd glimpsed more than his fair share of harrowing medical cases whilst waiting for his mom to get off of work. Acting as an army medic was basically the same as an ER shift, just more running and getting shot.

"When this is all over, you should go back," Sam encouraged, flipping through a frost encrusted pocket notebook he'd been scrawling on during their time with Gabriel.

"Like you went back to Stanford?" Adam pointed out. Sam chuckled softly and nodded.

"Point taken," Sam conceded. "_If you can't get over to third battalion, hook up with Doc Ryan, he'll fix you up with what he has to spare._"

Adam thanked him and went on his way, conscious that in less than an hour, the Germans would begin bombing their position. Dirt, snow and gun powder would soar, the evergreen trees would burst, and one of the bleeding men in his care was going to die.

After what seemed like the better part of a month, Sam led Easy Company to take the town of Foy. Two days later they took Noville and after that, Rachamps. They stayed in a convent after the battle in Rachamps and Dean was too tired to even hit on the nuns. Dean, Sam and Adam had all fallen asleep to the gorgeous melody of the choir singing "Plaisir d'amour".

* * *

When they woke up, they were back in civilian clothing, stuffed into the Impala. Still tired as shit, Dean drove for about an hour to find a motel to crash in before getting back to Bobby's. Adam could vaguely remember Dean shaking him awake in the back seat and climbing out to see they'd stopped at the Underlook Hotel. None of the trio could muster any embarrassment when the scruffy concierge told them the Muncie Spring Pride Parade wasn't for another month.

Adam's head had been on his pillow for about an hour before he was awakened again. Five demonic bald guys with Glasgow grins floated in, wearing dusty tuxedos and holding scalpels. They held him down and tried to cut out his heart. Luckily Dean came out of the bathroom and shot three of them in the face while the other two fled. A few minutes later, after quickly packing, the brothers opened their room door to discover a part human, part demon, part robot man hulking down one end of the hallway.

On the other end was Jack Nicholson, wearing a red sweater and carrying a fire axe. That was when Sam figured out that Gabriel was still messing with them.

Because Dean insisted that they couldn't kill Jack Nicholson, they ran at the robot-demon. During the fight Sam was stabbed in the shoulder, Dean was punched out cold and Adam was thrown through two walls. He'd been unable to get back to his brothers because at that exact moment, the concierge appeared. He was wearing a floral dress, speaking with a woman's voice and holding a steak knife.

After tussling with the concierge (Norma was what he called himself), Adam managed to rip the 9 millimeter Glock that Dean had given him from his back pocket and shoot the concierge between the eyes.

Of course by then everything had gone silent and Adam was forced wander dimly lit hallways in search of Dean and Sam.

The bare light bulbs flickered every few minutes. He held the Glock out in front of him, keeping his muscles relaxed. Wrists straight, thumbs locked downward, crease of his finger on the trigger… He tried to remember all the tips Sam had given him, but having been a medic during their army stint, Adam had never quite gotten used to looking out for himself. Just the guys bleeding their intestines into the snow.

Adam briefly wondered if fake army service could lead to fake shell shock. Did fake killing that concierge mean he'd experience fake remorse?

He realized this was a stupid time to be pondering such questions. What he really needed to think about was the ghost lecture Dean had given him. No, he needed to concentrate on not shooting Sam or Dean if he discovered them behind a corner. But he also needed to be ready if some monster was behind that corner…

Adam felt a cold whisper of breath on his neck. He pivoted on his left toe and pulled the trigger. Before the bullet had even left the chamber, Adam knew he'd done something stupid.

Sam had been standing behind him. The Glock had been aimed straight at his throat and the bullet tore through his neck, leaving a gaping hole. It began to spew blood like a little fountain. Some of it gushed down Sam's chest, numerous streams seeping into his shirt. Adam saw Sam's eyes go wide as saucers before his knees gave out and he fell back, his body hitting the ground. It sounded like thunder.

Adam sunk to his knees and hunched over his brother. He frantically tried to staunch the blood flow, ripping off his jacket and pressing it to the wound. Sam made a choking noise, gurgling blood over his lips and chin. Adam wasn't surprised when Sam stopped moving. He'd seen it before. He'd _done_ it before.

"Shit," Adam hissed, his throat constricting. Tears prickled the edges of his eyes and he wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist, his hands now drenched with Sam's blood. "Sam, holy shit… Sam, I'm sorry… Shit, shit, God fucking damn it!"

"Relax," Sam's corpse assured him. Adam drew his hand from his eyes. Beneath him lay Gabriel's body, unbloodied and bemused. "One wayward shot, no big deal."

"You fucking jerk!" Adam yelled. He shot to his feet and fired the gun three more times, straight into Gabriel's heart. The bullets bounced off of Gabriel's chest and fell to the ground, impotent and wasted. Gabriel hopped up, brushed himself off and laughed.

"That was a pretty good hissy fit," Gabriel said, holding Adam's jacket out for him, clean of blood. "Now what are you gonna shoot the ghosts with?"

"Why the hell am I in here anyway?" Adam asked, tucking the gun away in his jeans. He snatched the jacket away from Gabriel and shrugged it on in a huff. "I know there's no time stamp on wasting the Devil, but how the hell is shooting Germans and getting chased by transvestite serial killers going to help us?"

"Help you," Gabriel corrected. "You said you wanted to be on Team Free Will. But we gotta know you're up to snuff."

"Isn't there a quicker way of doing that?"

"This is really a lot quicker than you think," Gabriel replied. He held up his fingers and snapped. They were standing in a grove of trees, at night time, and in the middle of the grove the earth was torn apart. Many of the trees were flattened and splintered. "Archangel means never having to settle for what's in front of your eyes."

Gabriel snapped his fingers again and Adam was seated on a spindly wooden barstool in a smoky lounge. In front of him was a stripper dressed like a pirate, dreadlocks and feathers in her hair, her many bangles jangling as she swung around the pole. Her spin ceased, she winked at Adam and then began to discard her frilly pirate blouse. Gabriel sidled up to Adam and slid a yellow drink in front of him.

"You've really only been in my company for about two days," Gabriel explained. "We'll have time to kill ol' Lucy. For now, drink your screwdriver."

The archangel proceeded to buy Adam a lap dance, because he'd been 'such an excellent student.' To the jarring guitar strains of Warrant's "Cherry Pie", Gabriel interrogated him. Or at least, it appeared to be casual conversation as a woman shook her boobs in their faces, but Adam could tell all of the questions were calculating. Their talk never strayed into random topics. Adam felts bits of himself slipping through his answers to queries about how long he'd played baseball and if he'd ever gotten a blowjob from a sorority chick (Gabriel was of the opinion they were overrated).

A stripper in lacy black came over and offered Adam a private dance. He stuttered out a no, stared ahead at the topless pirate and took a sip of his beer.

"Loosen up Milligan," Gabriel urged, looping an arm around the lacy black stripper. "You're acting like you have a girl to go home to."

"I do… or at least maybe…" Adam sighed. "I have no fucking idea what she wants."

"Who's the lady love?" Gabriel asked, shoving a couple of one dollar bills in Adam hand as the lacy black stripper began to Hoover Gabriel's neck.

"Kristin McGee," Adam groaned. He took another sip of beer and let his forehead bang against the bar. He could feel the pirate stripper's teeth on his fingers as she retrieved the bills from his open hand. "We went to school together—"

"I know her!" Gabriel shouted, slamming his hand against the bar. "I used to bang her aunt!"

The first day of seventh grade, rather than tackle the first section in their biology textbooks, Kristen had gabbed to Adam and her friend Alice about how she'd run away during the summer. Gabriel's story correlated in all the same spots.

Her whole family, including her parents, stuffy Olivia, and baby Tanner, had gone to visit Aunt Jayma in Florida. Five days later, after having shuffled their children around Disney World for far too long, Mr. and Mrs. McGee were so tired that they boarded the plane without realizing that Kristen had hidden in the airport bathroom. Rather than put Kristen on a different flight, Jayma took Kristen back to her hotel room, showed her a map of the eastern seaboard and told her to point to where she wanted to go. The next morning they hopped into Jayma's boyfriend's car (a red '55 Ford Thunderbird, Gabriel recalled wistfully) and began a summer long tour of going to amusement parks, the beach, and wandering the Appalachian Mountains. As Gabriel told it, Kristen had called him 'Uncle Skip' and he taught her how to count cards.

When Adam asked how Gabriel had met Jayma, he snapped them out of the strip club and back to the haunted motel.

Before Adam could even call out for Gabriel, Sam rushed around a corner.

"Adam! Behind you!"

Sam bowed his head and tackled Adam to the ground just as an ax swung through the air where Adam's neck had been. Both men looked up from the floor to see Jack Nicholson whirling his ax around and lifting it above his head. He growled before bringing it to the ground. Sam and Adam rolled apart and scrambled to their feet. Jack Nicholson continued to go after Adam. As Adam backed away, a blow from the ax nicked his arm, but Adam took the opportunity to aim a kick square at Jack's chest.

Jack Nicholson fell back to the floor and his ax cluttered next to him. Sam grabbed it and with one swift arc, brought it down on Jack's throat, decapitating him.

They stood breathless over the body for a moment before Dean emerged from a panel in the wall. He stared blankly.

"You killed Jack Nicholson," Dean exclaimed in disbelief.

Jack Nicholson's head began to roll around and yell "Here's Johnny" like a broken record. His body began pawing blindly at the ground, trying to stand up.

"I told you," Dean grumbled, urging Sam and Adam toward the exit. "You can't kill Jack Nicholson!"

* * *

When the brothers crossed finally located the exit and crossed the threshold, it was daytime again. The sky was gray and the sun was obscured by a rolling continuance of thunderclouds, but it was nonetheless day time.

The parking lot was now in front of a high school. Dean looked down to see that his hand was no longer in the door to his beloved Impala, but instead rested on the window of a silver Volvo. He was wearing white cargo pants and a white hoodie. Across the Volvo, Sam was wearing dark jeans and a crisp white jacket. His hair was sticking out in all directions and he looked paler than usual. Really pale, the kind of pale he got when he was craving demon blood.

"Where are we now?" Adam asked, wearing a black overcoat and a gray shirt. He too looked unhealthily pale.

"I'm not sure, but _man_ I am hungry," Dean complained. A cheerleader passed by, smiling at him, her striped navy blue and white striped skirt swaying pleasantly in the breeze. Dean licked his lips when he realized that whatever perfume she was wearing, the cheerleader smelled like a bacon cheeseburger.

"Do you guys smell ribs or, just like, barbecue sauce?" Adam said, his stomach grumbling.

"Not exactly," Sam choked out, grasping the handle to the Volvo's door with all his strength. Everyone, all the students milling around the parking lot, smelled like demon blood to him. "Dean we gotta get out of here." He was praying Gabriel didn't want to tempt him or something, cause he couldn't handle another stint of withdrawal in the panic room.

Dean studied Sam's form and recognized the withdrawal symptoms.

"All right, let's get off the beaten path," Dean decided. "But we're not taking this douche-mobile."

Dean and Adam each grabbed one of Sam's arms and dragged him to the forest of pine trees conveniently located next to the school. Just as Sam began to calm down, Adam sensed another presence in the forest. The scent belonged to a girl and she was intoxicating.

"We might want to speed this up," Adam whispered to Dean.

"Speed up what?" Dean snapped. "His addiction recovery? Unless we can find Gabriel, we're just going to have to tie him to a tree."

"I can hear you, Dean," Sam ground out. "And that's not going to work." They passed through a patch of sunlight in the trees. "Wait!"

Sam shrugged out of his brothers' holds and backed into the sunlight. He looked down at his hand to see it was shimmering, glittering, sparkling and iridescent, like a thousand microscopic diamonds had been compressed into every square inch of his skin.

"Sam…" Adam snickered. "You're… so fabulous…"

"I always knew, deep down," Dean chortled, "that you were the Queer Eye to my Straight Guy."

Sam glowered at both of them before grabbing their arms and jerking them into the sunlight. Their skin was also dazzling, scintillating, gleaming, and twinkling.

"Okay, what is this shit?" Dean said, backing into the shadows and trying to shrug himself into his clothes so that he would never, _ever_ have to see the sight of himself sparkling ever again.

"Oh my Heathcliff!"

All three men turned to see Kristen emerge from behind a pine tree. The moment he saw her, Sam's mind went blank with hunger and he lunged at her. Dean pulled him back while Adam set himself between Sam and Kristen.

"Get her out of here," Dean shouted.

Adam obeyed and, ignoring the sweet scent of succulent hickory meat emanating from Kristen, grabbed her arm and dragged her back in the direction of the high school. He decided right then and there that Gabriel was a huge asswipe, a big bag of dicks, and an all around douchebag, for bring Kristen into this.

"I knew it!" she gulped, weakly letting Adam string her along. "_You're impossibly fast and strong. Your skin is pale white and ice cold. I know what you are!_"

Adam felt his feet freeze in their tracks.

"_Say it,_" he urged Kristen, stepping closer to her skin, to the smell of a 12-bone slab of ribs. "_Out loud. Say it._"

"_Vampire,_" Kristen whispered breathily, stepping closer, an inch away from his face.

"_Are you afraid?_" Adam said in a low voice. Kristen's hand came up and clasped his cheek. Adam could hear the sound of her blood pulsing in her wrist.

"_No,_" Kristen stated. Her blank eyes stared at him. "_You won't hurt me._"

It was too much. To the human eye, what Adam did would have seemed like a flash of light. But to Adam it all felt incredibly slow motion. He pushed Kristen to the ground, hunched over her and grabbed her chin, forcing her head up and away from her neck. He bit into her skin with ferocity he'd never felt and drank, her blood flooding his mouth with juicy taste and sliding down his throat like sweet fire.

After a couple of minutes, Adam realized he was groping her left breast and that there was no heart beat beneath it. His hunger quenched, he pulled back to see he'd accidentally snapped Kristen's neck at an odd angle.

"Okay…" Adam looked up to see Gabriel standing above them, one eyebrow raised. "Wasn't expecting that one."

"She's only a figment of your imagination, right?"

Gabriel nodded. Adam stood to his feet and shrugged.

"Whatever this lesson was, it's safe to say I have stopped caring," Adam declared. "We have bigger fish to fry."

"Here endeth the lesson," Gabriel conceded. "This was really more of a time delay anyway. How was she?"

Adam licked his lips.

"Tangy and delicious," he admitted.


	7. Bon Jovi is Easier Than String Theory

A/N: As far as _Twilight_ goes, I skip hatred and go straight for manic depression. I literally want to smite any bitch with the balls to compare it to Buffy. Although my friends and I have this theory that if Angel ever read the Twilight series, he'd be Team Edward. He'd have an R-Patz jersey.

Back to the actual plot! Thanks for the encouragement on Gabriel's character. I adore Richard Speight Jr.'s performance and Gabriel is one of those characters who can be hilarious and also quite dangerous. I'm sorry to say that his humor might be downplayed a bit in my story, but I'm going to try to keep him as in character as possible.

Kristen's dream takes place in Pamela Barnes's version of Heaven. Ash, John and Mary Winchester, and Jo and Bill Harvelle are there too and eventually they'll get speaking parts. But the scene was already pretty crowded. All the string theory stuff Ash talks about came from Wikipedia, so any scientifically accurate audience members can point out mistakes/submit alternate better dialogue. I'm terrible at science.

Jill G. Lowry: I'M SORRY I MADE YOU PHYSICALLY ILL! My bad. I adore Band of Brothers (in fact, that's why Kristen calls Gabriel 'Uncle Skip'). The second segment was originally going to take place in _Platoon_, but I couldn't resist Sam as Winters, Dean as Nixon, and Adam as Roe (such sad puppy dog eyes). The foxhole thing makes sense and I went back to observe it in the Bastogne episode. I finally realized the foxholes only look large because a _camera_ is nestled in there, plus the actors are shot from below.

RubyFresh: It was my master plan. Or maybe just a sign from the universe. I'm not sure what the universe and I are trying to say though…

* * *

**Chapter Seven: Jon Bon Jovi is Easier Than String Theory**

* * *

Minutes after sprinting up the stairs to be alone with her sobs, Kristen heard Sam accuse her of letting Dean out of his cage. Kristen imagined that he would yank her downstairs and harangue her until she admitted to the crime. But Sam and Adam stomped out of the house and the roar of an engine carried them off.

Four hours later, Kristen padded softly back down the staircase and saw the antique clock on the mantle had both hands on midnight. Bobby was by the bed, staring out the window. Adam's outline was still rumpled in the sheets.

"Gabriel?" Bobby was saying in disbelief. He was facing the window, holding a phone to his ear. His other hand was balled up and shaking, though the rest of his body stayed still. "You think I'm gonna take orders from some prig like you-

"You wanna save the world," Gabriel instructed through the garbled static, "then yeah, you'll do my favors."

"What's keeping the boys?"

"We're going on a little sojourn. But don't you worry; they'll be back soon enough, in tip top shape, ready to halt the apocalypse. So, I'm going to need you to look for the usual apocalyptic omens."

"I know what they are. Bursts of missing people, blood running in the water supply, rain in dry lands, droughts in wetlands, et cetera. I've got a running tab on all of 'em."

"I also want you to do some Googling on Niveus Pharmaceuticals."

"You want me to keep account of their stock?"

"Pay attention to press releases and pre-orders. Also, you know the girl?"

"There's only one here."

"Don't let her leave. Don't let her go outside, don't let her out of your sight, don't even let her breath too loud."

"What could you possibly want with her? She's just a kid."

"No. Demons are on her scent and the angels ain't far behind."

"Is she dangerous?"

"Not even. She's a girl scout. Worst she can do is charge you a heinous amount of money for her cookies."

"Any other _requests_?"

"You want me to send Carmen Electra over? You sound awful tense—"

Bobby clicked the phone off, paused for a moment, and then launched it into a corner. It hit the wall and cluttered into a dozen pieces of plastic. He heard a wince in the background and wheeled himself around to see Kristen hovering at the foot of the staircase.

"Is Adam okay?" she asked, pursing her lips.

"He's fine," Bobby assured her. "Despite your best efforts, he and Sam got to Dean before he did anything monumentally stupid."

"Then I'm going home," Kristen retorted, whisking past Bobby and into the kitchen. Bobby wheeled himself behind her but stopped when she rounded a corner and descended into the basement.

"Now just hold on a minute!" he hollered after her. He edged himself to the top of the first step, straining to see Kristen in the dark. He could hear her rustling around, gathering her clothes. "Maybe Sam didn't explain this well enough, but some demon took time out of his busy destroy-the-world schedule to hunt you!"

"I guess no one told him it's duck season," Kristen said caustically, "not pasty white girl season."

"You think this is funny?" Bobby roared. "Demons aren't kind folk, they like torture and they like blood. If Cas hadn't shown up when he had, you'd be wishin' you were dead right now."

Kristen appeared at the foot of the staircase. She had shoved her sneakers on to her feet and in her hand she cradled the remnants of her clothing. Wrapped inside them were her wallet, her daffodil necklace and her watch. She marched up the staircase and when Bobby refused to move from the doorway, she spun around on her heel, almost losing her balance.

"I'll just leave the other way," she sniffed, wobbling quickly down the stairs again.

"Sam said your aunt died," Bobby called out, using up his last ditch attempt. It worked; Kristen froze.

"She died two days ago," Kristen replied in a low voice. She slowly rotated back to him and Bobby had to shift his gaze away; despite every horrible thing he'd ever witnessed, a girl with a bruised face still got to him. Kristen's eyes were narrowed, her nostrils flared and her entire body had begun to tremble with fury, as she hadn't had time to move past the first stage of grief: anger. "In San Diego. In an earthquake."

"Or demons got her and made it look that way," Bobby shrugged. Although he watched Kristen drop her belongings to the floor and stomp up the steps, he wasn't quite prepared when she took the armrests of his wheel chair and shoved it back. Bobby clambered for his brakes when he got his balance again, he saw that Kristen had tears rolling down her face again.

"You are a pathetic, sad old man," Kristen huffed, "and you can stew in your own misery without—"

"Ain't fair to run out on a cripple, 'specially when you're wearing his dead wife's clothes," Bobby cut in. Kristen's squared shoulders began to sag and she sighed. Bobby rolled forward and inch or two, trying not to crowd her. "I know I'm weird and I know you're scared. But what happens when some demon comes along to try to finish you off?"

"You'll roll on them?" Kristen said, wiping her eyes.

"No demon gets over this threshold, I've made sure of that," Bobby declared, gesturing toward the door Kristen had just pushed him into.

When he'd gotten home from the hospital, Sam had just vowed to start living a normal life. He'd invited himself to stay at Bobby's for a few days, under the pretense of needing a car, and had assisted Bobby in demon proofing the place. They'd painted extra devil's traps everywhere, glued salt lines above every entrance and blessed all his water pipes. Bobby considered explaining this to Kristen, but figured it would all sail right over her head.

"Stay here, work with me," he finally requested. "We can try to figure out why that demon was after you."

"I have to go home," Kristen sniffled.

"Give me three days," he urged her. This was a lie, but he figured three days would give him enough time to either contact Gabriel to find out what the hell was going on or find the right moment and lock Kristen in the panic room. "Are you really going to abandon a lonely old cripple?

"You can stop guilting me with the cripple card," she mumbled, stepping away from the basement and following Bobby back into the living room.

"Gotta use what works."

* * *

Bobby started off by having Kristen give him her life story. He figured that this would cheer her up, since women love to talk about themselves. Admittedly, Bobby drifted off a few times during the picturesque Minnesota small town childhood, but he was fully awake for the important parts.

Kristen glossed over the prom, the pregnancy and the miscarriage, but as Bobby had heard her shouting match with Adam, he didn't press the issue.

Kristen had been planning to go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a tentative plan to go on to graduate work in the field of theoretical mathematics (Bobby drifted off again when she started to explain theoretical mathematics). Two days before the movers were to drive Kristen's belongings to Cambridge, Kristen had woken up in the middle of the night and taken the loaded van herself. She cranked up the radio, blaring Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" during her entire trip until she ended up in Chicago. After getting mugged, Kristen had left the city and used her allowance to get an apartment in Oak Park, a suburb just outside of Chicago.

Again, Kristen glossed over the details of how her family had handled the situation. For all intents and purposes, Kristen had been living an extraordinarily mediocre life as a waitress in Oak Park for the last year and a half. There was no need for demons to be chasing her.

Bobby offered Kristen the use of the guest room upstairs, but she claimed she wasn't tired. In fact, she ransacked his cupboards and made a pot of coffee. He put her to work going over some of the ancient Revelations books with a fresh pair of eyes, but that didn't help.

"Can't I just do your taxes or something?" she begged.

"See if anything that demon said pops up in here," Bobby instructed, tossing her a third edition of _Bristow's Demon Index_. Kristen pouted and flipped through the first few pages. Her eyes popped wide open.

"What's this?" she demanded, tearing away from the couch and over to Bobby's desk. She thrust the book under his nose and pointed to the illustration in the preface, a plaited pentagram surrounded by a circle of flames.

"An anti-possession ward," Bobby said, raising an eyebrow. Kristen bit her lip and flopped back on the couch, burying her nose in the book with an unexpected fervor. "Where have you seen it before?"

"I got it tattooed one summer with my aunt," Kristen mumbled. "I thought it meant, like, nature balance or something."

Bobby gave her a onceover. Though the dim lighting certainly didn't help, he couldn't see any tattoos on her.

"I have eight tattoos," she informed him, sliding down in her seat, "none of which you can see. Except this one." Kristen kicked up her leg like a can-can dancer and Bobby could just make out a little black goat on her ankle, with 'XIV' inscribed under it. "It's Capricorn, the symbol of the Fourteenth Roman Legion. I had an ancestor in there."

Kristen refused to tell him about any of her other tattoos and they argued for about an hour. It was around three AM, when Kristen made another pot of coffee that Bobby suggested they take a break and get some rest. Kristen still didn't want to go to sleep and Bobby didn't want to risk her pulling an escape while he slept. So he offered to watch TV with her.

Bobby didn't own a DVD player, much less DVDs. And he didn't get cable. Their viewing choice came down re-runs of _Dr. Sexy, MD_ or something very English on Masterpiece Theatre. Kristen picked Dr. Sexy, much to Bobby's chagrin.

Kristen dozed off on the couch about two episodes in.

* * *

It took Kristen a second to process her new surroundings. A lot of people were pressed against her, swaying and yelling and smoking. The floor was thrumming with the vibrations of guitar riffs, soon joined by jolts of a drum set. A man's throaty voice sounded from above and Kristen screamed in elation when she heard his words.

"_Tommy used to work on the docks  
__Union's been on strike  
__He's down on his luck.  
__It's tough, so tough…_"

For whatever reason, Kristen was at a Bon Jovi concert and she didn't have to care about anything. She felt bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and started singing along, letting the music dictate her spastic dancing. She thrust her arms in the air and let her hips swivel where they might.

"_For love—we'll give it a shot.  
__Whooa, we're halfway there  
__Livin' on a prayer  
__Take my hand and we'll make it I swear—_"

A man's hand closed around Kristen's wrist and yanked it out of the air. She spun around and saw the angel, Castiel, staring at her.

"Aw, shit…" Kristen mumbled to herself.

Castiel took a split second to glower at her before dragging her away from the concert. The black t-shirted crowd parted before him like the Red Sea. Kristen strained to get one last look at Bon Jovi, up on a platform perhaps fifty feet away, the intense stadium spotlights creating the illusion of daylight around them. The music and the roar of the crowd was so deafening that Kristen was dazed when the sound became hollow.

The angel had dragged her into one of the concrete hallways.

"Can't this wait?" Kristen whined, "I'm one of the only people I know who likes Bon Jovi. Can't we just stay for—?"

"No," Castiel barked. "It's your fault I'm here and as such, you will assist me in communicating with Sam and Dean."

"You might enjoy yourself!" she insisted. "We could get you a t-shirt and crowd surf and stalk Jon Bon Jovi! It'll be epic!"

"This isn't a concert!" the angel said. "We're in Heaven. This is only a memory and we don't have much time."

Kristen's heart plummeted into her stomach. This was officially not a dream.

At the end of the hallways was a grungy looking group of people, three men, three women. One of the men was in his late forties, the other two in their thirties. One of them had a mullet. Two of the women were blond, one younger, one older. The last woman, a curly-haired brunette, was wearing a tight black tank top and acid wash jeans and she was smiling at unsettlingly at Kristen.

"Thought we'd never catch you on the axis," she said. "You look confused."

"Do I?" Kristen said.

"Give her the equation," Castiel instructed. The guy dressed in flannel and with the worst mullet Kristen had seen up close stepped forward, clutching a piece of chalk.

"I know this kind of thing is s'posed to come natural to a Seer," he said, gesturing for Kristen to follow him. He began drawing a square root sign on the wall. "But we've got to move you along if you're gonna help get us out of this mess. Now, we're going to start with a lesson about a developing theory in particle physics which attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity."

"I know what string theory is," Kristen said, trying to decipher the equation Mullet Man had put on the wall. "What the fuck is a Seer?"

"Kristen," Castiel said, "when you get back, tell Sam and Dean that they don't have much time. Michael has already moved on to his next vessel."

"His next what?"

"String theory posits that the electrons and quarks inside an atom are not zero dimensional objects," Mullet Man continued, "they're dimensional oscillating lines, what Albie and I like to call 'string', and these strings possess only the dimension of length, but not height or width."

"You're Jayma's niece, right?" The man in his forties had stepped forward. He was tall and had black hair with salt and pepper stubble on his face. He looked vaguely familiar. "I'm Adam's dad." He rested a hand on her shoulder. "I need you to tell him something…"

"—which posits that a supersymmetry exists between bosons and fermions, even though we know they're totally different. I won't drag you through the existence of a lot of extra, unobservable, dimensions to the universe, in addition to the usual three spatial dimensions and the fourth dimension of time—"

"A Seer is essentially a human who can project onto the astral plane and navigate the axis mundi," Castiel explained belatedly.

"She doesn't even know what she is?" the brunette woman exclaimed. "No wonder it took me so long to make the connection!"

"Castiel," the younger blonde said, "you have _got_ to give her that speech you got from the old lady, otherwise she's not gonna beuseful at all."

"Just tell Adam that I'm sorry I wasn't there for him," Adam's dad continued, locking eyes with Kristen. "Tell Sam and Dean I'm sorry I didn't trust them and that I'm behind their decision one hundred percent."

"—Black hole-like black p-branes are identified with D-branes, which are endpoints for strings, and this identification is called Gauge-gravity duality—"

"Sorry and you trust them," Kristen said weakly, nodding to Adam's dad. "But string theory has practically no practical applications. How is it going to help me get an axis mundi? What's an axis—?"

"I spoke with your grandmother, Addison," Castiel interjected. "There are some things you should know."

* * *

Bobby was quite put off when Kristen jerked awake and ran into the bathroom. She slammed the door nearly off its hinges, locked the door and cried for the next six hours. Bobby _did_ catch around three hours of shut-eye though, so he decided it wasn't a completely bad thing.

Kristen wanted to go home. Not to Windom. Not to her monstrous grandmother or her grieving family. Not to her traitorous aunt's funeral. But she couldn't go back to Oak Park either, where her best friend and roommate was waiting to report her movements to demons.

She still didn't even know where she was. No one had told her what state Singer's Auto Salvage Yard was in.

Kristen's earliest memory was of Jayma taking her to a park when she was still a toddler. It was the first time she'd met Adam. Jayma had always taken her to that park, even though Mrs. McGee insisted that the park was in the bad part of town (which was half a block from the good side of town).

Staring at the linoleum on the bathroom floor, Kristen sank into despair, trying to sort through all her memories chronologically. She tried to reevaluate each and every one with this new data. Her family was full of Seers. From birth, some great mystical power inside her had been quashed. Every carefree summer spent visiting Jayma morphed into the memory of Jayma following her every move, spouting Machiavelli and disappearing while Kristen slept, melting into the night with whatever it was she consorted with.

Grandma Addison had let Adam die. The woman who'd guided her through the Washington DC Holocaust museum and lectured her on the importance of life had allowed Adam to get eaten alive.

Hours later, close to tearing her hair right from the roots, Kristen felt herself dozing off. She finally exited the bathroom to make another pot of coffee. Bobby, who was passed out on his bed and snoring like a lion, heard her bustling around in the kitchen. He tried to get her to talk about what she'd seen when she (and Kristen still couldn't even fathom this part) had been _projected_ into Heaven. But Kristen kept it to herself.

Around sundown the next night, Bobby became embroiled in a 60 Minutes report that focused on Niveus Pharmaceuticals and the swine flu vaccine it was toting. Kristen took the time to grab one of the kitchen phones to call her parents (she grabbed the one labeled CIA).

"McGee residence, Olivia speaking."

"It's Kris."

"Kristen? You heinous little bitch, you better get back here right now. Mom and Dad are worried sick. Where the fuck are you?"

"I'm… going to be a while. I need to talk to Dad."

"You can't keep doing this, this prodigal son bullshit. You can't keep running away every time you want to have an emotional breakdown."

"Please just give the phone to Dad."

"No. You are ridiculous, you know that? I have been covering for you our entire lives and I am fucking sick of it. You have got to learn to pull your weight, to be a part of this family."

"Give the phone to Dad."

"What, so you can crush him? He thinks it's his fault you're being a freaky runaway spaz. Don't even get me started on Tanner, who can't figure out why his favorite sister keeps leaving him, can't figure out why she doesn't love him. You are such a selfish bitch!"

"… I'm not saying you're wrong. But this heart to heart is going to have to wait."

"I'm done with you. Got it?"

There was a rustling sound.

"Kristen? Honey, where are you?"

"Dad, did you know?"

"Know what?"

"About Jayma. About Grandma. About _me_."

"… They never told me. I just knew they were different."

"But you knew _I_ was different."

"Your grandmother told me she took care of it. That I didn't need to worry."

"She _poisoned_ me."

"What?"

"You just trusted her? You couldn't be bothered to figure out what was wrong with me?"

"_What's_ wrong, sweetie? I know you miss your aunt, and you should be here for this."

"My entire life has been a series of manipulations and lies! And you were in on it! Does mom know?"

"She doesn't know what you are, _I_ don't know. Kristen, we never lied—"

"You lied every single fucking day!"

Kristen slammed the phone into the wall cradle. It fell to the floor and Kristen stared at it, letting the dial tone numb her mind.


	8. How I Learned To Love The Cosmic Mistake

A/N: I love long, self-indulgent author's notes. I've just realized this. You know what I don't love? Re-reading my chapters and realizing what got past my censors. It takes SO MUCH EFFORT to go back and correct them. This is why I'm putting it off. Procrastinators of the world, UNITE!... TOMORROW!

I've been in New Orleans for the past week. It's really hard to be writing something for _Supernatural_ and not get inspired by the Big Easy. So I incorporated the city into some of the later events for this story. I promise it won't be completely off the rails, but seriously: I visited a voodoo museum and made an offering! Twas amazing. My wish was really abstract so I'm not sure I'll get it, but all the same. Awesome.

Anywhoodle, this chapter has a considerable amount of exposition in it, so drink a Redbull before you read it. But it's all revelatory. In the background, there will be tons of "DUN DUN DUUUUNS". Probably not actually. Just be glad I didn't give you another chapter of "Kristen and Bobby: The Odd Couple", because I totally could have. Those two have so much potential for awkwardness and hilarity, I kind of want to write a spinoff where they solve crimes on a weekly basis and Bobby is the badass but serious good cop while Kristen is the eccentric, bumbling bad cop.

The title of this chapter is a reference to the Peter Sellers Cold War classic _Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb_. And yes, my plot smacks of _Dogma_ and Buffy Season Five, but I promise it'll be different.

**

* * *

**

Chapter Eight: Dr. Archangel, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cosmic Mistake

* * *

Dean didn't want Gabriel putting his pretend fuel in the Impala, so they stopped at a gas station a few miles from Sioux Falls.

Sam went in to get sandwiches so that their stomachs wouldn't be rumbling when they got back to Bobby's. He and Adam stared at the cooler display for a few minutes.

"Tuna salad?" Sam ventured.

Adam wrinkled his nose.

"Ham and swiss?"

Adam shrugged nonchalantly.

"Turkey and cheddar?" Sam guessed again.

"Pastrami and rye," Adam answered. Sam grabbed the sandwiches, also picking out a cheeseburger for Dean. While Adam grabbed a couple bottles of Gatorade, Sam ruefully surveyed the liquor selection and grabbed a few bottles of whiskey. He was going to need something that would keep Dean calm while he laid out his plan for baiting Lucifer. And maybe something to soothe the pain of getting Gabriel to Windex his ribs.

Outside, Gabriel had conjured himself a bowl of shrimp cocktail. He sucked on one of the plankton thoughtfully while Dean tried to select which credit card to pay with. Richard MacGuyver, Harrison Hamill, Floyd Waters… He picked the Hamill credit card.

"You better explain your plan," he mentioned to Gabriel, setting the nozzle in the Impala. "You know, before I grab my holy oil and show you everything I learned in Hell."

Gabriel raised an eyebrow.

"You've had a plan cooking for a long time," Dean continued. "I mean, we're going to go kill your brother. No one makes a decision like that without some agonizing and a bit of contemplating how you'd do it."

"We bait Lucifer," Gabriel stated. The shrimp cocktail dissipated into thin air and he shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. "While he's distracted with his shiny new toy, I kill him with my angelic switchblade. Apocalypse averted."

"Now that's what I can't get behind," Dean snarled. "Sam is _not_ gonna be bait."

Dean's eyes flickered over to the shop to make sure Sam was still inside. He and Adam were at the checkout counter, comparing the lighters on display. That was one thing Dean had noticed during their time in Gabriel's War Movie Mania; Adam and Sam could chat easily. They were both college boys, both monogamists and both of them seemed to share an affinity for the work of Akira Kurosawa.

"I am not putting him in the same city as Lucifer," Dean asserted, "much less telling him where Sam is. And I'm not being protective, I'm telling you that if we give Lucifer that chance, he's gonna turn Sam."

"Relax, Dean," Gabriel urged. "Sam's not the bait. You know that girl, the one who showed up with Adam?"

"What about her?" Dean said.

"She's a Seer," Gabriel replied, a sneaky grin sliding across his face. "A cosmic mistake."

A nagging voice in the back of Dean's head (okay, a screaming banshee in his head) wondered why this coincidence—their lost brother's girlfriend was some kind of mystical—hadn't emerged before now. But the possibility of leaving Sam out of the Lucifer equation was too tempting.

"Does Satan need her for a tarot reading?"

"Seers get into the afterlife by way of spiritual projection," Gabriel explained. "Not sure on the math, but you find one strong enough, get inside her… you can tag along for the ride."

* * *

Kristen sat on the dryer for a stultifying ten minutes before realizing that the dull rhythm and vibrations were lulling her to sleep. She proceeded to hop to her feet and do twenty jumping jacks to get her blood flowing again. She'd gone for a full two days without sleep so far.

Two days of living in a creaky house in the cold South Dakota spring. Two days of drinking coffee every hour on the hour. Two days of choking down dry ham and cheese sandwiches and cold pizza. Two days of watching every mind numbing daytime talk show instead of surfing the Internet because the grouchy cripple needed the internet to research the apocalypse. Yeah, right.

So Kristen had resorted to doing laundry to cure her boredom. When the load was done, she decided to be even more girly and fold all of Bobby's clothes for him. Slipping on her crisp, warm jeans was a reward in itself. Her shirt was too far gone, so she tossed in a waste basket, picked out one of Bobby's flannel numbers and tied the hem around her waist. The combination of insomnia, stress, and bad eating had been _fantastic_ for her figure, Food and Drug Administration be damned.

As she admired her figure in the grimy basement mirror, Kristen's eyes fell to the belt of black ink symbols around her waist. Every summer she'd spent with Jayma had been commemorated by a tattoo; these had to mean something. Kristen had tried to research them, but the longer she stayed awake, the harder words became to decipher, so sifting through Bobby's dusty tomes hadn't helped her solve the mystery of any of her other tattoos.

There were moments when she wanted to call Janice, to discuss these developments, but then she remembered that according to Castiel, Janice was some sort of agent of Lucifer or something. An actual witch.

Castiel. Such a pansy name. He sounded like a Dungeons & Dragons character.

Kristen's admiration of her waist was interrupted by a sudden crash of wooden boards against the storm door. She heard what sounded like Bobby's voice yell "Shit!" and rushed over to the storm door, using all her wobbly-armed strength to heave them open.

The wooden boards clattered off to the side. Bobby was seated in his chair in front of the storm doors, clasping his hands innocently, but he had a bag slung around one arm of the wheelchair. A hammer was sticking out of it, and Kristen guessed there were some nails in it as well.

"Are you trying to board up your storm doors?" Kristen asked, folding her arms over her chest.

"They're broken," Bobby stated after a moment of looking completely dumbstruck.

"What if there's a storm?"

"… That sure is a nice shirt you're wearing," he said, pasting an uneasy grin to his face.

"I don't think you realize how creepy it is that you're trying to board up my escape route," Kristen snapped, sliding back in to the basement to pull on her sneakers.

"Ain't my fault I gotta babysit flight risks," Bobby groused. He wheeled himself over to the wooden boards and began setting them into a neat pile next to the door when Kristen reemerged from the basement.

"Maybe you should just not imprison people," she said, stepping out and making a beeline for the junkyard, "ever think of that?"

"Where are you going?" Bobby called after her, wheeling himself in pursuit.

"For a walk, alone!"

"I told you, you need to stay in the house!" Bobby cursed when she darted out of eyesight.

"This is the middle of Shithole, Nowhere," Kristen laughed bitterly. Bobby caught a glimpse of her rounding the corner of a pile of Fords. "Who the hell is going to come looking for me here?"

Neither of them heard the sound of a car rumbling up the pathway.

* * *

"If you two can't behave yourselves," Gabriel declared, "one of you is going in the time out corner."

Dean and Sam had been panicked, to say the least, when they got back to Bobby's house and Bobby was nowhere to be found. Eventually they spread out and found Bobby in the salvage yard squabbling with Kristen about the ethics of locking a young woman in a basement for her own protection.

With a snap of his fingers, Gabriel had everyone seated in the living room (Bobby at his desk, Dean on the chair next to him, Sam and Adam on the couch and Kristen on the cot). After Bobby and Kristen were done glaring daggers at each other, the first order of business was Niveus Pharmaceuticals. According to Bobby's research, the CEO of Niveus had the Food and Drug Administration in his pocket, so they were on the fast track to deliver their swine flu vaccine to the public.

"It's a front, for Pestilence, obviously," Gabriel explained. "If the press release says they're two weeks away from a definitive cure, it means Pestilence is using company employees to test his demonic virus and they'll be shipping out in _one_ week."

"The usual cadre of demons at his beck and call?" Dean said.

"Fewer than War or Famine," Gabriel explained. "Pestilence is a big fan of humanity, likes to watch them cough and sputter until the light is gone from their eyes."

"And the virus is the Croatoan thing Yellow Eyes was testing, right?" Sam guessed. "Everyone turns into a Stepford psychopath."

"Ladies and gents, Sam Winchester: more than just a hat rack," Gabriel said, nodding. "He's hit about nine towns so far with the flu, last couple were as Bobby mentioned: San Francisco, Reno and Salt Lake City. My guess? Laramie, Wyoming is his next target."

"He's following the Interstate?" Bobby said in slight disbelief.

"Takin' the apocalypse on tour," Gabriel confirmed. "I'll deal with him, but you and your outfit are gonna need to get to company headquarters… Yes?"

Kristen was raising her hand. Adam saw her tapping her right foot, something she'd always done in math class when the teacher refused to call on her.

"Let me get something clear first," she said, scooting to the edge of the cot in a businesslike manner. "You're not Skip Muck, a felon house painter my aunt used to date, you're freaking _Gabriel_? Like, hey-Mary-about-that-uterus Gabriel?"

"Not really," Gabriel shrugged. "Some scribe played fill-in-the-blank with my name there, but I _am_ an archangel. Want me to prove it?" Gabriel snapped his fingers and he was wearing a six-foot expanse of white feathery wings on his back. He grinned and flapped that at Kristen, who just raised her eyebrow.

"No, thanks," Kristen said, shaking her head. "I just figure I have information you might need. Um…" She took an uncertain breath. "I had this dream that I was… at a Bon Jovi concert—"

There was a collective snort in the room.

"I think you're describing a nightmare," Dean interjected. Kristen rolled her eyes.

"And that angel was there, Castiel," she continued. "He said Michael's going to try to use your dad as his vessel."

Sam's heart ceased to beat for a minute. Adam's eyes widened like saucers while Dean shot out of his chair, kicked it away and advanced on Gabriel, pointing an accusatory finger in Gabriel's unfazed face.

"You took us on some bogus spirit quest while Michael snatched up Dad?" Dean growled, his voice rising with every syllable. "Screw Pestilence, we're going after Lucifer! _Now!_"

"Castiel's taking your dad on the run," Kristen elaborated, hopping between Dean and Gabriel defensively. "He, um, he said sorry he wasn't there for you—" her eyes lingered on Adam for a minute before she met Dean's eyes "–and that he supports your decision to screw destiny."

"What else did Dad say?" Adam begged.

"I didn't pay attention!" Kristen said shrilly, sitting back down on the cot and gathering her knees to her chest. "Some guy with a mullet was trying to explain to me how string theory applies to astral projection!"

"We cannot let that fight happen," Sam told Gabriel. He nodded to Bobby, who nodded back and turned to his computer, using the ramshackle omen tracking system to begin brainstorming Lucifer's location. "We need to get to Lucifer as soon as possible."

"That's why Kristen and I are going to see Pestilence," Gabriel said with a roll of his eyes. He snapped his wings away and strolled over to Kristen. "His demons get one whiff of her and Lucifer is gonna come running. His vessel will be far away, he'll be weak and I'll shiv his ass."

"Yeah, I'm not gonna let you do that," Adam declared. He met Kristen's eyes for just a second before she groaned and set her forehead against her knees. He got up and stood toe-to-toe with Gabriel, whose vessel was a couple inches shorter than Adam. "You better take her home right now," Adam said in a low voice, "because you are _not_ using her as bait."

"Cool your jets, Romeo," Gabriel instructed caustically.

"What would he want with _her_?" Bobby interjected, eyes still locked on his computer screen. Gabriel sighed under his breath and snapped his fingers again. Bobby's computer froze, the modem sputtered a moment and then the screen went black.

"The Apocalypse is the end of life on earth," Gabriel began, his tone deadly serious, "and it's what Lucifer has been working toward, what fate has laid before him. When his mutiny was over, he wasn't just locked away in Hell. He was cursed, unable to return to the homeland."

"Heaven," Adam supplied. Gabriel nodded.

"The turncoat angels," Gabriel continued, "the ones who have joined Lucifer's side, they can't retake Heaven without him. And he's probably given up hope of ever being able to return, which is why he's aiming for a scorched Earth, to be his new home. But Seers, as I mentioned," Gabriel said, narrowing his eyes at Dean, "they're cosmic mistakes. Loopholes that the writers of destiny never accounted for."

"So Lucifer would use Kristen to get back into Heaven?" Sam murmured. He hadn't missed the look between Dean and Gabriel, but he was distracted by scanning everything he knew about psychics and oracles. Surely, Castiel would have mentioned that Seers had this ability when he first figured it out…

"Well, no," Gabriel snapped at Sam, "because I'll stab him before he's got his chan—"

There was a pinging sound when something made of glass was thrown at Gabriel's head. It broke on impact and shattered around him. Bobby recognized it as bookend from his mantle. Everyone turned to see Kristen standing up, scowling at Gabriel and trembling so much her arms were shaking.

"Now what'd you do that for?" Gabriel asked, nonchalantly brushing glass out of his hair.

"I am _not_ going to be bait," Kristen said, her voice breaking as she tried to keep angry tears choked back. "Just because you fucked my aunt doesn't mean you have any authority over me."

Gabriel took a deep breath, as if to remind himself not to smite her.

"I promised Jayma I wasn't going to let anything happen to you—"

"I don't give a flying fuck what she wanted!" Kristen bellowed. "I wanted my own goddamn life, but no one seems inclined to give me control over _my own body_." Kristen's hands flew to her eyes to brush away her tears. She tucked her hair behind her ears and started to laugh, a bitter trickling giggle. "You want to dangle in front of the Devil like pair of car keys… my roommate is an agent of Satan… my grandmother let the guy I love get eaten… and lovely Aunt Jayma gave me homemade abortion tea… What the hell are you staring at?"

Attention was directed to Sam, whose eyes were locked on Kristen's waist. He'd noticed a fleur-de-lis tattooed there earlier, but when he looked closer, he realized that he recognized some of the symbols from the X-rays Dean had gotten of their ribs.

"Those symbols are Enochian," he realized, his eyebrows knitting together as he tried to piece together their meaning. His hand moved forward to take hold of Kristen's waist to get a closer look, but then he remembered his manners and withdrew, shooting Adam a sheepish look of apology. Adam narrowed his eyes, but kept his body trained between Gabriel and Kristen.

"She protected you," Gabriel said. "All those tattoos, they're protection; they're inked by shamans and gods. Your aunt is the reason Raphael hasn't found you and slaughtered you." Kristen's eyes widened and she drew a sharp breath. "He's just obeying protocol, to keep Lucifer out. You're the last Seer left on Earth and if not for _his_ bad luck—" Gabriel jerked his head toward Adam "—you'd probably still be safe."

"The last?" Kristen whispered in a small voice.

**

* * *

**

Twelve Hours Earlier…

* * *

Janice Tatem snuck into the Windom family home through the back door. It was easy to locate, as it was one of the biggest houses in the entire town and was nestled in the middle of the hamlet, at the intersection of 5th Avenue and 9th Street. It was a grand five bedroom affair in the mock Tudor style, brown brick on the sides, but the front and the back had off-white stucco walls with decorative timber attached in vertical lines. The windows were tall and mullioned, divided like grafts with iron furnishing.

She crept through the dewy grass, blending into the night in her black denim and stylish yet affordable trench coat. The back door was a set of glass French doors that led straight into the den, where a table at the center of the room stood with seven tall candles burning steadily on top. Seated in a plush leather chair was Addison Evangeline McGee, wrapped in a blue silk robe that had belonged to her mother. Her hair was skewed out of its usual tight bun and the wool blanket around her legs had slid to the floor.

The doors were unlocked and Janice strode right in.

"Tea?" Addison offered, staring straight at the candles. Janice shook her head and deftly slid into the seat next to Addison.

"The deal's off," Janice declared. "The Morning Star demands I bring him a Seer."

"You idiot girl," Addison spat, turning to glower at the slim witch perched next to her. The old woman was angry, but tired. She could barely lift her hand from the armrest and she had to gasp every few words. "My daughter gave her life to keep you away from him, and this is how you repay her?"

"Jayma was wrong," Janice said, shrugging. "I agreed to keep Kristen safe, but denying her power is no way to do it. Truth be told, I think it's wearing Kristen's sanity a bit thin."

"And you two were getting along so well," Addison added ruefully.

Janice wished she could've explained her feelings. The truth was she'd been blazing mad when Jayma had given her the lame duck task of watching over her bratty niece. But Kristen had grown on her, like a Chia pet. Over the past two years, Janice had likened Kristen to a puppy. She needed to be fed, coddled, and walked, as well as given a treat every once and a while.

"Kristen will be safe," Janice promised. "But I'm still bringing Lucifer _a_ Seer."

The meaning of her words hung in the air for a moment before Addison understood. She started laughing, her chest heaving with exhaustion.

"Good luck with your endeavor," Addison said, her hand crawling down the woolen blanket she had kicked to the floor. She clutched it and struggled to tuck it back around her legs. She sank further into the chair, still laughing, one or two tears drifting down her cheek. "Tell him it would have been an honor."

"… Where _is_ Kristen anyway?" Janice wondered, raising an eyebrow. "I did a locator spell earlier and it fizzed out on me."

Addison's laughter had drifted off into silence. Her eyes were glassy and still locked on the candles.

Janice sat there with a skeptical look on her face before she realized anything was amiss. She leaned over and nudged the old woman's elbow a few times. Her flesh was still warm, but it was eerily still. Then it dawned on Janice: Addison wasn't breathing anymore. She seized Addison by the shoulders and shook her a few times, but the old woman stayed glassy-eyed and still. Janice sniffed her lips then took one of the china tea cups and recognized the odor.

Deadly Nightshade. _Fuck_. Fuck, fuck, frackity _fuck_! Janice felt a burst of panic seize her heart.

The old broad had probably been seizing minutes before Janice had arrived. She really couldn't blame Addison for wanting to off herself; her beloved daughter was dead. But Janice was now faced with a certain dilemma: without Addison, Kristen was the only Seer left. Janice was going to have to hand her over, or her ticket into Lucifer's good graces was gone.

Janice stood up and began to pace. One of the candles on the table had melted into a puddle and Janice felt her insides melting in a similar way. She probably didn't have much time before a family member came poking around and discovered Addison's body. But this was Janice's only starting point. Kristen was completely off the grid, cut off from her family, her cell phone was dead and Jayma had done a fantastic job of making Kristen invisible to angels, demons, and all conceivable forms of witchcraft.

The flustered witch pivoted on her heel to pace some more and smacked right into something that felt like concrete wall. She stumbled back and landed hard on her tailbone. When she saw who it was, Janice withheld her expletive.

"You know a Seer is useless if she's dead," Sachiel said, examining Addison's body with just a scan of his eyes.

"Sachiel, I'm sorry," Janice said as she scrambled to her feet, wincing just a tad. "It's just, um… That is a great vessel you're wearing. Is it new?"

"It is."

Last time Janice had seen Sachiel, he'd been wearing a tall Nordic man. Janice had been doing a harmless luck chant while Kristen was at work and Sachiel had penetrated her subconscious. He had her worshipping him in seconds. Out of respect for Jayma, Janice had withheld Kristen's identity to him, not an easy task. Sachiel intoxicated her, exhilarated and terrified her. His barely concealed contempt for her just made him seem all the more seductive.

Janice had never felt more like a coward than when she received news that Jayma was dead, because she'd barely waited an hour before sending a message to Sachiel telling him she had a Seer for Lucifer.

Now Sachiel appeared as an athletic Asian woman with a cropped hair cut and a pinstriped business suit tailored to an exact fit. His appeal to Janice hadn't changed though. She stared at him a moment before realizing that he was incredibly enraged.

"Are you then telling me," Sachiel ground out, "that you have destroyed my last hope of delivering my brother home by letting the Seer die?"

"This isn't her," Janice squeaked. "It's her grandma. Uh, Kristen is… around here somewhere… glad you got my message…"

"You go through very obscure channels," Sachiel said, staring daggers at her. "I have some business in the city of Dallas. A garrison to destroy. I will return to you in exactly one day. You will have her in my possession by then. Clear?"

"Crystal," Janice said, nodding her head vigorously.

A small gust of wind blew through the room and Sachiel was gone, the only sign of his presence being the butterflies in Janice's stomach. After some thinking, some more pacing, and a drink of Scotch out of Addison's personal collection, Janice figured out how she was going to find Kristen. It was an old spell, a spell that was on the long list of spells Jayma had forbidden Janice from practicing.

Janice used a penknife to collect a small sample of blood from Addison's leg and tried not to think about it.

* * *

**Twelve Hours Later...**

* * *

Adam and Kristen were sitting out on the porch while the grown-ups talked. Or yelled expletives.

"You don't have to babysit me," Kristen sighed, using her toe sketch the equation Mullet Man had given her into the dirt. "I know telling them 'Screw you guys, I'm going home,' was a bit drastic, but it's not like I can walk back."

"I just figure we should talk," Adam said softly, fidgeting with a piece of moldy wood he ripped off one of the porch planks. He flicked it off to the side and let his hand drop next to his leg. After a moment, he inched it toward Kristen's hand. The moment their hands brushed Kristen snatched hers away and folded into herself.

"I don't want your pity!" she snapped, her mouth muffled by her knees. "I probably would have gotten the abortion, just so you know."

"You're so bipolar," Adam grumbled. He stepped down off the porch, stomping away Kristen's equation and looked out into the salvage yard. He would've loved the place as a kid, running around, climbing into the old cars and using them for a lookout tower. He glanced back at the house; he could see Sam and Dean facing off, waving their arms emphatically, and squaring their jaws. Every now and then, Dean's gaze flickered out toward him, never longer than a second.

"I haven't slept in a few days," Kristen was saying to him. She did sound miserable. "I was just thinking and… my family has been really horrible to you."

"Not entirely," Adam shrugged. "Your mom made my costume when the whole second grade performed _The Ugly Duckling_… So there's that."

"Yeah, but still," Kristen said, a hint of a smile passing over her lips, "I mean, I wish I'd known—"

"Who gave you the shiner?" Adam interrupted. He extended his hand, and when she didn't shy away, he cupped her cheek with his hand, his thumb sliding around the edge of the fading bruise on her eye.

"Some demon," Kristen mumbled. She closed her eyes and put her hand on top of Adam's, squeezing lightly. "You know, before you died, all I dreamt about was my cousin Cecilia. It explains those recurring dreams where I'm falling out of a tree and she's racing over to me with her Batgirl cape."

"Your cousin's heaven is you breaking your arm?"

"No," Kristen replied. She grinned, her eyes still shut, and Adam felt something warm spreading through his chest. "She totally got to save me. You, on the other hand…."

Adam leaned in and gave her a feather light kiss on her lips. Kristen tipped up her head and slid her hand behind his neck, bringing him in for a deeper kiss.

His kiss hadn't just opened her floodgates; it had completely obliterated them. A year of going to sleep every night and feeling the hazy memory of prom night didn't compare to the sheer pleasure of having Adam right there. Never before had Kristen so desperately wished she wasn't wearing pants.

Adam's skin pressed against her, warm next to the cold spring air and he knelt down in front of her, one leg on the ground, one leg between her feet. Her tongue slipped between his lips and traced the outline of his mouth, remembering every curve and the taste. Prom night he'd tasted like cheap beer, but now he was spicy and dizzying. She shivered in delight when she felt his palm brush against her waist, his fingers sliding inside the flannel shirt and rubbing her back with a slight touch. Kristen twirled her fingers in the belt loops of his jeans and pulled him down closer.

She whimpered a little when their lips separated, but Adam merely focused his attentions elsewhere.

"I love you," he murmured against her skin, nipping lightly at the base of her neck, thrilled by the hitch in her breath that accompanied his ministrations.

"I know," she sighed.


	9. Nancy Reagan Doesn't Approve

A/N: This chapter ties up some loose ends from the series, so I stole a few moments from the last four episodes of Season 5 and reworked them for my own purposes. As far as references go (because I'm a reference junkie and I figure I should be up front about it), I splurged a little on Mean Girls.

Twinkle: YAY! I myself watched all the first three seasons within a month! It's great, although watching it in real time has the torturous drawbacks of being only weekly, with breaks and whatnot. Sigh. Yay, Youtube music videos that tide me over!

Morkhan: Holy crap, that review had me rolling on the floor laughing. Please summarize my whole life like that.

_Special Wincest Alert_: In this chapter, Sam gets Adam into bed.

**

* * *

**

Chapter Nine: Nancy Reagan Doesn't Approve of Holy Consummation

* * *

"Dean, if this is the only choice, _I'm_ baiting Lucifer!"

"Sam, you're not listening to me."

"Really? Because it sounds like you're ready to sacrifice an innocent girl just to save me."

"_Sam, it's too dangerous, Dean, you don't trust me,_" Gabriel interrupted in a high-pitched mimicry. "_Sammy, I've gotta protect you, Dean, I outgrew this sandbox a long time ago, Sam, you'll always be my little brother, Dean, this isn't fair, la, luh-la, la-freaking, la!_" He took a second to clear his throat._ "_Thanks for all the confidence, douchebags_._"

"I don't get it," Sam said. "Y'know, you're so sure you can kill him, why haven't you found him yet?"

"Well, he's not listed in the phone book," Gabriel rejoined, "and even if he were, I've got about a hundred other angels to plow through before I could get to him."

"I think you're leavin' out your most obvious approach," Bobby mentioned, still studying his shorted computer. He was going to be livid if Gabriel didn't fix it before he left. "Why not convince him you're on his side? You've got the renegade cred."

"Everyone in the room, poll time," Gabriel said. "Raise your hand if you'd stab your own brother in the back instead of face him like a man."

"Yeah, because using the girl you swore to protect_ for bait_," Sam spat, "that's really brave."

"Sam, listen to me," Dean said, seizing Sam's arm and forcing him to look away from Gabriel. "We're way past getting to pick and choose how we stop the _freaking_ apocalypse! We have to look at the worst case scenario. Lucifer finds you, we lose, he has his vessel and it's the end of life on Earth. Lucifer finds _her_…" He unconsciously lowered his voice. "We lose and he's in Heaven. Far away from here."

"You really willing to let that happen?" Bobby asked in a low voice, eyebrows knitting together. He couldn't quite believe what he was hearing and it saddened him. Even two years ago, Dean would've found the suggestion reprehensible. Dean ignored Bobby, keeping his eyes on Sam's.

"Are you saying…?" Sam trailed off, gritting his teeth together as he tried to figure out if he was irate or heartbroken. "You think I'm not strong enough?"

"He'll turn you Sammy," Dean said, choking on his doubt. "He just needs time."

"Don't say that," Sam replied after a moment of pregnant silence. "You, of _all_ people."

"Get this through your heads, numbskulls!" Gabriel interrupted. He'd been hoping to avoid the waterworks. "I don't _have _to keep you guys in the loop. I just know that if I don't, one or both of you will do something monumentally stupid. But you guys don't get to argue about it, you just do what I say! So, for the last time: here is the plan—"

Gabriel was consumed in a brief burst of white light and then he was gone. Sam and Dean examined the scorch marks that were left on the floor. Dean spun around and spotted it: a blood sigil, half concealed by the hallway, with a handprint in the center. He heard the soft click of heels going down the hallway and ran after them.

"Guess the plan's changed," Bobby grumbled as Sam followed his brother.

* * *

"Do you hear that growling?"

Adam finally came up for air. He pulled himself away (not an easy feat with Kristen's fingers entwined in his shirt) and scanned the salvage yard. A slight fog had descended, misting the windows and windshields. But other than that, everything remained still.

"I thought that was you," Kristen muttered. She adjusted her sitting position and bent her knee so that it slid right up Adam's leg. Adam could feel his cheeks flushing red and considered dragging her to the backseat of the Impala, caveman style. But A.) Dean would have killed him and B.) that damn growling had prickled his instincts. He studied all the corners of the yard, stared between the car towers, strained his eyes to see as far down the pathway as possible.

"It's just a stray," Kristen groaned. "Pay attention to _me_."

"You can see it?" Adam said.

"That's never been funny," she grumbled, propping herself up on her elbows. "The whole 'Kristen, there's nothing there' thing expired in middle school. That humongous dog is… oh, jeez, he's _right_ _there_."

Adam followed the direction of her hand to an empty space at the mouth of the pathway. After a second, he saw something that jumpstarted his heart: a series of paw prints, each the size of a trash can lid. The growling grew louder as more paw prints popped up in the dirt.

"Are there any bear-wolf hybrids native to these parts?" Kristen said. Adam slipped his hand into hers and slowly stood.

"Nope," Adam confirmed. He pulled Kristen up to the door and placed himself in front of her, pushing her back to the door. He briefly considered calling out for Sam and Dean, but the paw prints were drawing much closer to the porch and he didn't want to startle whatever it was. Even though he couldn't see it, the growling had become drawn out to short, punctuated roars.

"We're _both_ making a run for it," Kristen whispered fiercely, tightening her grip of Adam's hand. "In three… two…—SHIT!"

The beast roared and before the couple could even turn around it attacked. In a chilling bout of déjà vu, Adam felt the beast's teeth latch onto his ribs just before it tossed him off the porch like a rag doll. He landed face down on the hood of a broken Chevy and a rusty shard slipped across his cheek. Kristen was shrieking somewhere in the distance. He was still seeing stars when he felt teeth sink into his arm and yank him down to the ground. Adam reached in vain for the Glock in his back pocket, feeling the beast's hot breath on his neck and the paw pinning him to the dirt. _Fuck_…

Kristen appeared above him and aimed a shovel at his chest. She brought down the shovel on the dog's head and cried out. The creature emitted the bear-wolf hybrid equivalent of a yelp and dug its claws into Adam's chest.

Arms trembling, Kristen raised her arms for another hit.

"Don't!" Adam yelled. The beast's hold on him lessened and the shovel flew out of Kristen's hold. She screamed as the beast leapt on her and…

* * *

Dean was sure it was a woman who'd drawn the sigil. She was wearing one inch heels and lavender perfume, a scent so strong that it lingered in the hallway, filling Dean's nostrils and distracting him for a millisecond.

She'd escaped out the window at the end of the hallway and left it open, with the lace curtains swaying in the breeze. Dean yanked his personal Colt out of his pocket, unclipped the safety and climbed out the window. He jumped down, hearing Sam's grunts as he followed suit.

Dean scanned the dirt for her footprints, but there weren't any. Sam withdrew Ruby's knife from his jeans, turning away so that he and Dean were searching opposite directions.

"You like my finger painting?"

The brothers looked up. An olive-skinned woman with pixie cut dark hair was standing on the garage roof, legs crossed to keep her balanced tentatively on a beam. She held up her right hand, covered in blood, and delicately ran her tongue along her pointer finger, smacking her lips.

"I'm a big fan of your work," Dean said, cocking his gun and aiming it square at her chest. Even if she was a demon, a good shot would knock her down. "Maybe you could come down and discuss it."

"Dean Winchester, defender of the people, you wouldn't kill a lil' old human like me," the girl trilled, tipping her head to the side.

"So you're what, a witch competing for demon's bounty?" Sam guessed.

"Congrats on getting the angel out of the way," Dean said, keeping the gun trained on her. "But you still gotta get us."

"Not a problem," she giggled. "Did you think I came alone?"

On the other side of the house, someone cried out.

"Adam," Sam breathed before he tore off. Dean fired off a few rounds at the girl before he followed, but she threw herself back before he could see if she'd taken the shot.

* * *

… the beast blew its sulfuric breath in her face. Kristen held herself completely still beneath the gigantic hound, unable to make a sound. She could feel its matted fur on her arm, but it made no move to shred her.

Adam studied them as he groped the Chevy, struggling to stand up. He was running through his miniscule knowledge of demonic lore. What the hell was this, something completely invisible yet alive enough that the force of its breath blew tendrils of Kristen's hair over her petrified face? Angry puppy poltergeist?

The yard had returned to the state of complete stillness, silent but for Adam's ragged breathing.

"Adam!"

Adam saw Sam jet around the side of the house toward him. He knelt down and tentatively pushed aside bits of Adam's shirt to examine the bite marks. Adam hissed as Sam's fingers grazed the open wounds; by some miracle, the thing had missed his vital organs, but his blood was still flowing freely and pooling in the dirt.

"What happened?" Sam asked, pulling Adam's arm over his neck.

"You can't see the freaking bear-wolf hybrid _on top of me_?" Kristen squeaked in a low voice. The beast let out a soft growl and Kristen squeezed her eyes shut, wincing.

"I don't know what it is," Adam said, his knuckles white as he struggled to ignore the pain that spread over his torso every time he took a breath. Dean appeared, stopping just short of Kristen, spotting the paw prints around her. "It's like a dog, or, something, I can't see it…"

"They're called hellhounds," Sam said gravely. He met Dean's eyes and the elder brother backed away slowly toward the Impala. The hellhound growled, but didn't move and Kristen tried desperately to press herself flatter into the dirt. Just a few more steps and he'd have the Colt in his hands.

"Looking for this?"

Dean groaned and turned toward the voice. On Bobby's porch stood a black-eyed demon wearing a tall, dark-haired man with a beard and a Cubs t-shirt. His grubby demon hands were clenched around the Colt's engraved metal and he spun the chamber for effect. Fucking drama queen.

"Who said humans are useless?" the demon pondered. "This little witch—" he gestured to his left, where the broad from earlier was rounding the corner, nary a bullet hole in her body "—bagged me a triple bounty score. The Colt, the Winchesters, and the stairway to Heaven."

"Well, if it ain't stunt demon number two," Dean blustered, flexing his fingers, trying to plan out a course of action. Bobby had a number of resources in the house—but Dean seriously doubted he'd be able to rev up anything strong enough to take out a witch, a demon and a hellhound in one blow. He decided the best thing to do was keep them talking. "Just tell me something: which one of you is Dog and which one is the wife?"

"Let her go!" Adam demanded, falling against Sam. God, that kid had spit more blood after meeting his brothers than he had in his whole life.

"Trademark Winchester idiocy," the demon smiled, "gotta love it."

He aimed the gun at Adam and Sam. Dean slid reflexively in front of them. The broad was ignoring the standoff and knelt by Kristen with a pair of, of all things, hemp cuffs. She stroked the hellhound's back and cooed at it until Kristen felt confident enough to slide away from him.

"Sorry Kris," she said, fastening the cuffs around Kristen's wrists. "These are just a precaution, he insisted, I was all—"

"Janice, you bitch," Kristen ground out, "you are _so_ kicked out of my apartment!"

"You're going to thank me for this," Janice assured, pulling her to her feet. "When the Morning Star rewards us for aiding in his victory over Heaven, we are going to be richly rewarded! Think _Hilton_ sisters rewarded, just not cold-shiny-hard plastic."

"You can take your apology and shove it right up your hairy c—"

"Am I interrupting something?" asked a playful British voice.

Dean's heart sank into his stomach when he realized that Crowley had joined the party. _That _was the last thing he needed.

* * *

After Sam and Dean had leapt out the window to chase Janice, half-cocked, guns blazing, Bobby had wheeled around to go for his salt and his shotgun. He heard the sound of glass shattering and rolled into the kitchen.

"Fancy a fag and a chat?" Crowley snickered, hovering in the window, kept out by a permanent line of salt on the windowsill.

"I'm not in the mood for chattin' with traitors," Bobby barked. "Get off my property or eat salt!"

"You wanna save your boys or not?" Crowley offered. But for a brief pause, Bobby ignored his words and loaded a salt round into the barrel. "Nothing's changed," Crowley continued to insist, his voice rising. "I still want the devil gone! But that window of opportunity is closing fast, so you gotta make a choice—"

Bobby fired the shot and Crowley crumpled down, clutching his chest.

"There's a demon standing on the porch and a hellhound on top of the girl, waiting to shred those idiots," Crowley wheezed. "It's a simple fix!"

Bobby loaded another round and put his finger on the trigger. Something stopped him.

* * *

"That's a lovely little pup you've got there," Crowley said, patting the air beside him, his hand stopping just below his shoulder height. "Mine's bigger. SIC 'EM BOY!"

Janice leapt on top of Kristen to shield her from the claws and debris that began to fly as Crowley's hellhound attacked the original. Sam handed off the knife to Dean before throwing Adam down and covering him.

Dean raced towards the porch. The demon shot at Dean, but his aim was thrown off. From behind him came a wave of water, washing over his host, leaving the acrid stench of burning flesh in the air. Bobby quickly tossed aside the bucket and took his shotgun back into his arms. When the demon fell to his knees, the Colt slipped out of his hand and skidded down the steps below. Dean scooped it up and the demon was dead before he could scream his last curse.

The hellhounds were throwing themselves around the yard still, snarling and pushing each other into the perilously stacked cars, demolishing anything they landed on. Crowley danced gleefully at the sidelines, egging his hound on.

Adam tore himself from Sam's hold and shoved Janice off of Kristen, his pain numbed by adrenaline. In a rage, he held the witch down and landed a few good knocks in the face before a surge of her telekinesis knocked him flat on his back. Janice stood up and dusted off her trench coat.

"Gonna have to try harder than that lover boy," she said, flinging her hands to the side to knock Sam and Dean on the ground as well. Adam could've sworn he saw her nose crinkle the second before Bobby's shotgun flew out of his hands.

"I just need another bucket of water," Adam responded, clutching his wound, trying to stand back up. "Don't you chicks melt?"

Janice smiled and held out her hand. Adam felt a ton of weight press down on his chest and he struggled in vain against it.

"In the words of your dearly departed mommy," Janice said softly, leaning over him, "eat me."

The wooden handle of a shovel connected with the side of her head and Janice crumpled to the ground. Adam felt the weight disappear and saw Kristen standing above him, shovel in hand again. She threw it down next to the unconscious Janice.

"Boo, you whore."

* * *

"How am I supposed to prove to you I was telling the truth? I thought the Colt would work! It's an honest mistake!"

"You _could_ have saved us from the Wicked Witch of the Midwest here!"

"You've got a scrappy little girl with a shovel, what do you need me for?"

Dean gritted his teeth. He decided to take the high road and not give in to Crowley's baiting. As much as his instincts were screaming at him not to trust the demon, Dean believed Crowley's story. And if he had a better plan for killing Lucifer than Gabriel, who was he to argue, especially when his brothers would no doubt vehemently refuse to follow Gabriel's course of action?

Sam had Adam on the bed, a penknife sitting by the bed as Sam used a sewing needle and some dental floss to stitch up the bites from the hellhound. Kristen held Adam's hand and stroked his forehead, pursing her lips even as she found it surprisingly easy to stay calm. Her hand had gone numb a minute before and she wondered if Adam had always been this strong.

"Do you need anything?" she asked in her sweetest voice. Adam gripped her hand tighter, growling in his throat, sweating as he tried to keep still.

"You could get me some whiskey," he answered finally, breathing hard. "Or y'know, put on a skirt."

"Fifth of whiskey, coming right up," Kristen said, taking a second to pry Adam's fingers away before she ran into the kitchen. Sam had to laugh a little as he heard her banging around, tearing open cabinets in her frantic search.

"It's in the cupboard left of the stove," Sam called over his shoulder.

"I'm supposed to be the family medic," Adam fumed, swinging his arms above his head to grip the head board. His midsection trembled just as Sam went for a stitch and Adam yelped a bit when Sam extracted the needle to try again. "You suck," he gasped, "no offense."

In front of the fireplace, Dean had finally finished tying Janice to a chair, with her own cuffs. Crowley had taken her trench coat and shaken it out, so that all of the hex bags she'd lined the inside with fell out onto the floor. He tossed them into the fireplace along with the coat and tossed a lighter into the pile. As they burned, the scent of lavender again filled the room. Bobby rolled in, grinding something in a wooden bowl with a pestle.

"Got this recipe from Rufus, should keep her from pulling any _Bewitched_ crap on us," he told Dean, holding the bowl under Janice's still bleeding wrist. A drop or two later and Bobby stirred the mixture up. He dipped his thumb in and smeared some of it on Janice's forehead. Dean shivered a little, then turned to Crowley.

"So what's your plan this time, huh?" he said to the demon. "Get more of our friends dead? Kill the devil with the Holy Grail? Cause that would probably work just as well as your last plan!"

"It was your plan too!" Crowley reminded him. "But before we do anything, we might want to find out just how much Lucifer found out about the chit here." Crowley nodded to Kristen, sitting by Adam's side and pouring him a glass of whiskey.

"He knows all," Janice mumbled, stirring a little. Her eyelids fluttered up and down, the pain of her head injury pulsing through her skull. "The Son of Perdition is present in all things, undeceived by words and he… he alone is holy…"

"Say that again, you manky tart," Crowley said, gripping her chin and yanking her face up.

"The Prince who has risen," Janice said through clenched teeth, "awaits his holy union with the Seer and will come for her if she is not delivered!" She spat in Crowley's eye. In return, the demon put his hand under her seat and flipped the chair over. Janice yelped as she toppled close to the fire and Dean reluctantly pulled her upright.

"Okay, Luce doesn't know a damn thing," Crowley asserted, using his sleeve to wipe at his eye. "It's written all over her face. No one at Hogwarts taught her to withstand interrogation."

"Ain't that convenient," Bobby muttered.

"I am trying to assist you idiots," Crowley yelled, turning to face the room, "even though your little stunt made me _the most buggered son of a bitch in all of Creation!_"

"We don't care," Dean said in exasperation, rolling his eyes.

"They burnt down my house!" Crowley added. Dean and Bobby just glared at him, unimpressed; Sam ignored him completely, tying off the last of Adam's stitches. "They ate my tailor! I have for lived for two months under a rock _like a bloody salamander!_ Every demon on Hell and Earth's got his eyes out for me! And yet here I am, Winchester central, trying to help you lot!"

A crash sounded in the yard. Everyone looked out the window, but only Kristen could see that Crowley's hellhound was still playing around with the free flying limbs of his opponent.

"How come I'm the only one who can see those?" she said, turning to Janice, her hand back intertwined with Adam's as if to signal her loyalty.

"Seers see beyond the fabric of reality," Janice answered. "The longer Jayma's dead, the less her glamour will blind you. You'll be able to see the spirits, the Reapers…" Janice turned her gaze to Crowley, an impish grin taking over her features. "You'll see the true face of demons."

"What else didn't she tell me?" Kristen pressed. "I mean, what, can I freaking walk through walls, teleport, levitate, bend stuff with my mind?"

"… Okay, sweetie, you're a Seer," Janice said, "not one of the X-men."

There was a knock at the door.

* * *

The unexpected guest was a postman, one who chattered at ninety miles a minute about how he owed Gabriel a favor. He had a bulging manila envelope addressed to Sam and Dean and while they were signing for it, he fidgeted with some sort of weird scepter that had wings and snakes attached to it. Sam dotted the 'i' in Winchester and then the postman was gone in a blur. They ripped it open to find a DVD. Sam set his laptop up on top of Bobby's TV and inserted the DVD.

The screen flashed red and a white script scrolled over it: 'ALL PERFORMERS IN THIS FILM ARE OVER THE AGE OF 18, HAVE CONSENTED TO BEING PHOTOGRAPHED, AND HAVE PROVIDED PROOF OF AGE. 18 U.S.C. SECTION 2257'. Then the screen flashed black and in pink letters it now read 'Casa Erotica'. A curvaceous blonde in black lingerie appeared next.

"An angel of God sent you porn?" Janice wondered in vague disbelief.

"It's a good one," Adam and Dean said in unison. Dean shrugged awkwardly; Adam sheepishly looked away from Kristen and took another sip of whiskey.

"Is that Gabriel?" Bobby said.

Gabriel had appeared on screen, dressed like a delivery guy and wearing the most heinous mustache any of them had ever seen. He and the blonde began to kiss and grind against each other, giggling and moaning. Just as Bobby was about to unplug the laptop, Gabriel turned and broke the fourth wall.

"Hey guys," he said, tearing off the mustache. "If you're watching this, I can safely assume that whatever sent me home, you survived it. Go you!" He gave them a thumbs up. "Anyway, Heaven is now more or less on my tail, and wouldn't you know it, Mike's not happy with me. I made you this fun little tape and luckily, Hermes owed me a favor. Now, I can keep Heaven distracted for a little while, but we've lost the element of surprise. So until further notice, you should know this: only an archangel's blade can kill an archangel. There's only four in existence and you ain't gonna find them in your local mall. I've got one, Lucy's got one, Mike's got one and that tight ass Ralph has one."

"Raphael," Dean murmured to himself, remembering Anna's words: '_Do you know how many angels have actually seen God? Seen his face? Four._' In the background of the video, the blonde had spread herself over the bed and gone back to pretending to read her magazine.

"And not just anyone can wield them," Gabriel was saying, "just angels. Anyone else is going to suffer a serious case of impotency. So here's what you're going to do. Adam, Kristen, perk your little kiddy ears up." Gabriel grabbed a pair of school teacher glasses out of his pocket and waved a finger at the screen. "All you two need to do is _just say no_. I don't care if all the cool kids are telling you to, y'know, 'be a vessel'—" he held up his fingers to make quotations "—or 'join in holy consummation with Satan', just say no. Think to yourselves: what would Nancy Reagan do? Now, Sam, Dean, Professor X…"

Gabriel took off his glasses and sat down on the bed. He looked around in the background and cupped his hand over his mouth.

"When we pulled up, I left some C4 in the garage for you guys to use on Niveus. Since you guys are actually interested in saving humanity instead of my family death match, I figured you guys could use your down time to take out the next horseman. Use the C4 to blow up the testing lab and then take a good shot of your antibiotics when you face Pestilence. Laramie's his next target: be there in three days. Until we meet again, boys…" Gabriel turned to his female companion and leapt on top of her.

Crowley slammed the laptop shut.

"You had him, an archangel, up your sleeve and didn't tell me?" he asked irately.

"Blow me," Dean snapped. "We don't owe you anything!"

"I really hate to ask this," Adam interrupted, pulling himself into a sitting position, "but what did he mean by holy consummation?"

All eyes looked to Crowley, who in turn looked to Janice.

"You wanna take this one?" he said, pulling a box of Virginia Slims out of his pocket and lighting one in the fireplace.

"Sweetie, it's not as bad as it sounds," Janice said, using her free leg to hobble the chair closer to Kristen, whose eyes were frozen saucer-wide in horror. Dean grabbed the top of the chair and held her back. "In fact, it will be wonderful. The ritual to return the Morning Star to his throne in Heaven is one of physical and spiritual union. I mean, sure, it will take you a bit of training to will yourself into Heaven, but after that it'll be a breeze!"

"You mean to say, as in, sex?" Dean asked.

"Yes, I mean to say sex," Janice answered, rolling her eyes. "Thank you Captain Obvious."

"If there were any mathematical concept to express the ick factor of this situation," Kristen said, feeling a bit sick, "it would be infinity. That is infinitely gross Janice."

"No, infinitely gross would've been that 49-year-old firefighter you almost hooked with last St. Patrick's Day," Janice said matter-of-factly, "which I stopped you from doing, because I am _such_ a good friend."

"Okay, that's it," Adam said, holding fast to the bed post as he drew himself up to his full height. "You guys can erase her memory, kill her, do whatever, I don't care. Kristen's going to the panic room, now!"

"Adam, stop that," Kristen retorted as Adam pulled weakly at her hand, trying to make her move toward the basement. "You're going to tear your stitches!"

"Boy's got a point," Crowley mentioned. He withdrew a small knife with a short, razor sharp blade and a black handle from his coat pocket. He took a drag of his cigarette and exhaled in Dean's direction. "She knows too much."

"Wait, don't do that!" Janice begged, eying the knife in terror. She started twisting around, trying to wipe the blood-and-ash mixture off of her forehead. Crowley grabbed a chunk of her hair to hold her head still. "If you kill me, the Morning Star will be angry; he'll unleash his wrath on you!"

"Zealots, think they're so special. It's so cute!" Crowley chuckled, smiling. Dean looked into Janice's eyes; they were watering up. She looked genuinely terrified and her gasps of panic were steadily rising higher in pitch. Against his better judgment, Dean grabbed onto Crowley's wrist to stop him from slicing Janice's neck.

"You wanna work with us, then you think before you slice," he warned.

The pop of a gunshot went off before Dean could finish his lecture. Crowley jumped back and a bullet hole appeared in the center of Janice's forehead. Her mouth was gaping open in shock, just like her eyes. Her head slumped forward and blood began to dribble into her lap. Kristen buried her head in the crook of Adam's neck, unable to cry, but unwilling to stare at the sight of her best friend's empty body.

Dean turned to see Sam coolly holding the Colt in his hand, his face void of emotion.

"That was cold boy," Bobby remarked.

"Crowley's right," Sam said when he saw the look of shock on Dean's face. "She knew too much."

"Course I'm right," Crowley said, tossing his cigarette into the fireplace. He picked up the chair, letting Janice's body drag on the floor as he exited through the front door. "You lot can have your fucking heart to heart time; Ripper could use an extra chew toy."


	10. Advertising for Burgers and Coffee

A/N: After reviewing the previous chapter, I'm thinking about giving poor Adam a gun. This chapter is a little flimsy, logic and action wise, and it's pretty much all about food, but I think it has some great talking points. I had to include the White Castle bit because on a mission trip with my church, two guys actually bought 20 sliders each and had an eating contest. It was awesome. And disgusting. Now I'm hungry. Snack break!

If anyone out there listens to the awesome band Florence + the Machine, I have decided that if Adam and Kristen were to have a theme song, it would be "I'm Not Calling You A Liar". And Wincest or not, Sam and Dean's would be "Kiss With A Fist". And Dean/Castiel shippers (like me!) would probably appreciate "Heavy In Your Arms".

If anyone out there doesn't listen to the awesome band Florence + the Machine, ask yourself why you make such bad life decisions. And don't discount them just because their music is on a _Twilight_ soundtrack. Those movies have ridiculously decent soundtracks. Plus, you can't stay sad after listening to "Dog Days Are Over". And the band's badass factor can't be doubted when listening to "Girl With One Eye" (especially the Bayou Percussion version. Or maybe the original. No, the percussion. No the… damn it).

Florence + the Machine fangasm over.

Streetwise: Wouldn't "Shagged Satan" be a great band name? Also, I bet you can spot the Dark Angel reference. Maybe not the Harold & Kumar one…

Thriving Willow: COMMUNITY COMES BACK SEPTEMBER 23RD I'M SO EXCITED! Sorry, just had to be said… I am secretly Abed…

**

* * *

**

Chapter 10: Subliminal Corporate Advertising for Burgers, Booze and Coffee

* * *

Along with the disturbing Casa Erotica instructional video, Gabriel had hidden layout plans to the Niveus Pharmaceutical warehouse on the disk. Bobby and Dean were poring over the layouts looking for entrance points and spots to triangulate the explosives for maximum damage. Sam (after being ordered by Bobby to sponge Janice's blood out of the rug) was on his laptop researching Laramie's current news for omens that would portend the arrival of Pestilence.

With no skills germane to either assignment, Kristen and Adam were left to sit on the bed and clean the Winchesters' extensive gun collection in anticipation for the assault. At first Kristen had been nervous (Adam insisting that he was a trained World War II paratrooper didn't help matters), but there came to be a comfortable assembly line quality to their work: Adam disassembling a firearm into its bare parts, Kristen gently wiping them down with solvent, and Adam putting them back together.

Every few minutes, Kristen would throw a furtive glance out the window. There was a cathartic sort of pain watching Crowley 'play' with his giant hellhound by tossing random limbs at it.

"You okay?" Adam asked softly, nudging her arm.

"Just thinking about… Chewbacca," she said lamely. Chewbacca was a shaggy little puppy Kristen had received for her eighth birthday. Although nothing like a hellhound, Chewbacca had been an aggressive sheepdog with a tender side… much like Ripper, who was now nibbling a little bit of something bloody out of Crowley's hand.

"That reminds me," Adam said, resting the sawed-off he'd been disassembling on his lap. He cupped a hand on her cheek to shield her gaze from the window. "I wanted to take back what I said at graduation. I really am sorry my uncle ran over Chewbacca with his car."

"Let's just void everything we said at graduation," Kristen suggested, pecking a kiss on his wrist. She laid down the solvent. "I'm gonna use the restroom. Be right back."

Despite five hand washings, the scent of the gun cleaning solvent lingered on Kristen's fingers. Kristen inhaled the pungent scent and was surprised at how awake she was. The crash would come soon; she had no idea how she was going to stave off sleep for another day.

She let the door creak close and was about to rejoin the guys in the living room, but she lingered in the hallway. Ripper was snarling and had begun doing laps around the house. Kristen peered out the open window, shivering from the breeze. The demon, Crowley, seemed different from the nameless other demons she had encountered. Sam and Dean tensed in his presence, but let him stroll around the yard and the house unwatched.

When Kristen turned from the window, Crowley was standing right behind her.

"Feel like cutting out the middle men, luv?" he said, his voice hovering above a whisper and his mouth curled but not grinning.

"How do you know so much about me?" Kristen asked, running her eyes around the hallway, trying to make sure none of the others were privy to the meeting.

"Your auntie and I had a few good times," Crowley answered, narrowing his eyes. Kristen suddenly felt dirty, as if she were the subject of voyeurism. She became very aware of the fact that she resembled Aunt Jayma a great deal. They even had the same haircut. "There's a voodoo priestess down in New Orleans, taught good ol' Jaymes everything she knew. I can take you to her."

"Demonic road trip, I think I'll pass," Kristen snapped under her breath, though in truth, she was intrigued.

"Those Neanderthals are kidding themselves," Crowley said. "Gabriel doesn't have the bollocks to kill his big brother. No weapons, no spell, no magic jewelry is going to wrest a fanatic like Lucifer from this earth. You're Jayma's girl; you're too clever not to have figured it out by now."

Kristen bit her lip and looked away, afraid to even consider the implications of what he was hinting at.

"If you can put him in Heaven," he continued, "you can put him back in Hell. His cage is pretty deep down but, uh, what's the line," he pondered, smiling cruelly. "_You're the only hope?_"

There was a flicker of movement behind Crowley's shoulder and Kristen hopped away when Sam tackled him to the ground, a large serrated knife in his hand. Adam flew to her and they stood to the side as Dean wrestled Sam away from the incensed demon.

* * *

"Because it's what Luke Skywalker would do."

Crowley had to raise his eyebrow at that ridiculous comment, even if Kristen _had_ just agreed to follow through with his plan of luring Satan into Hell. Although not quite impressed by Kristen (no mortal had ever impressed him), he was beginning to see traces of Jayma's blunt determination mirrored in the girl's refusal to heed Sam and Dean's assurances that she probably didn't possess the level of skill necessary to face Lucifer.

"Are you out of your mind—?" Bobby started to scold, but Kristen cut him off.

"When he found out his dad was a Jedi and his family was massacred by storm troopers, Luke didn't hide in a basement. He manned up and faced his destiny."

"Screw your 'destiny'!" Adam insisted. Crowley felt a bit like retching at the boy's sickly sweet antics, taking Kristen's hands in his, giving her long soulful looks with his goddamn baleful eyes. Crowley smiled to himself as he imagined gouging them out. "It's too dangerous. I couldn't forgive myself if you got hurt or died, I just…"

"I'm not going to point out that you're being a huge hypocrite," Kristen said gently, squeezing his hands, thinking of his full intention to accompany his brothers to kill Pestilence. "But even if I can't help, if there's any chance this priestess can tell me who I am or what's inside me, then I _have_ to go."

"I'll shack up with her in the Crescent City," Crowley offered, "and she'll be as safe as can be. Have fun with Pestilence."

"You can go fuck yourself!" Adam shouted, whirling to face Crowley. "_I_ will protect her!"

"Sorry," Crowley said, holding up his hand up to his ear. "I'm just waiting for the laugh track to kick in."

"Adam, calm down," Sam urged, placing a hand on his brother's shoulder. "You're still a rookie. If you two are gonna do this, we're coming with you."

"Um, excuse me?" Dean interjected, cocking his head to one side. They'd just spent the last hour arguing with Crowley _against_ taking Kristen to Louisiana. "In case you forgot, we have got a Horseman waiting at the gate. Kind of a _time sensitive issue_."

"Dean, no splitting up," Sam said. "That was the deal. The angels might still be looking for Adam, Lucifer knows about Kristen, I mean, it's a clusterfuck waiting to happen." Sam turned his gaze to Adam. "Screw God, and the Devil, and the apocalypse. Family comes first."

"Bugger, I might actually retch," Crowley muttered, miming puking into his jacket. While Sam and Kristen restrained Adam from leaping at Crowley to try and throttle him, Dean marched up to face the demon.

"You kill Pestilence," he challenged.

"I don't have any stake in that battle," Crowley replied. Dean could tell that despite his lazy casualness, Crowley's trembling features meant he was offended by the order. "Let him take out massive swaths of humanity; I'll just outsource to India."

"You kill Pestilence," Dean repeated, "then we trust you and follow _your_ plan. Oh, and just in case you're wondering, I ain't sealing this deal with a kiss." He flattened his lips in a thin-lipped grin.

"Fine," Crowley said sullenly after a moment of contemplation, during which he took out a cell phone and crushed it in his fist. "I have other ways of holding you to your word."

With a gust of wind, he was gone. A quick and silent glance from his brother told Sam that Dean had no intention of doing any such thing. Sam felt a rush of gratitude and pride for his brother, for wordlessly agreeing to protect Adam and Kristen whilst bending Crowley to their will.

"Well aren't you all just as honorable as a bunch of knights," Bobby growled from the sidelines. He had a phone in his hand and was dialing a number, punching the buttons as if they were bugs to be squashed. "Falling over yourselves to protect the damsel…"

"Who're you calling?" Dean asked.

"Rufus," Bobby snapped. "He might just be willing to pull his head out of his ass long enough to, I don't know, save humanity. Go get me that Johnny Walker Blue out of the cupboard."

* * *

Sam, Dean and Adam loaded most of the C4 into Bobby's van, as well as several obscure versions of Revelations and an armory before bidding him good-bye. Five hours after Gabriel had rolled the Impala into the yard, the old car drove out with moody Dean in the driver's seat, pensive Sam riding shotgun, and two high school sweethearts in the back, cuddled close together. For the first few hours of the ride, they murmured to each other, catching up, but Adam's head came to rest over Kristen's heart and he drifted off to sleep.

Dean and Sam refrained from any serious discussion, because she stayed awake, stroking Adam's hair, eyes fluttering every once in a while but never falling asleep.

"We take Exit 1A onto I-29 South, then we're in Iowa for a couple of hours," Sam said, folding up the map. He tucked it next to his seat and settled down. "I figure we can grab breakfast at in Missouri tomorrow morning, switch driving then."

Dean grunted noncommittally and it was on the tip of Sam's tongue to ask if he wanted to turn the car around and go after Pestilence. Instead, he turned to the window, watching the cornfields race by as he sank into sleep.

Sam awoke when Dean punched him (perhaps with a bit of malice) in the shoulder. It was still a little dark outside, blue with great streaks of gray announcing daytime. They were in the parking lot of a White Castle, which Dean had developed a sudden craving for. Adam was thrilled; Kristen less so. Sam offered to accompany her to the Starbucks across the street.

* * *

As Sam dug around his jacket for the bit of cash he'd stuffed in one of his pockets (at least he was pretty sure he had), he noticed Kristen eyeing one of the red velvet cupcakes on display with vanilla frosting and big chunky sprinkles.

"You want one?" he asked, startling her. She shook her head; he couldn't help but notice that her eyes were beginning to turn the same color as the cupcakes.

"The right thing to do would be get a sandwich," she sighed. "A nice, healthy something with, like, feta cheese and carrots or… oatmeal…" Sam laughed inwardly when she crinkled her nose in disgust.

"You can get anything you want," he offered, pulling a linty wad of twenties out of the back pocket of his jeans finally.

"I have a boyfriend," Kristen replied, as if it were a chore. "One cupcake is going to lead to nine and nine will lead to huge thighs and then he'll dump me because he's so embarrassed about his friends teasing him for dating a fat girl…" Kristen bit her lip in embarrassment. "Not that I've been thinking about possible ways your brother will try to dump me. Nope."

"Hi, welcome to Starbucks, what can I make for you today?" chirped the freckled barista.

"One grande latte, a spinach and feta wrap, and a red velvet cupcake," Sam ordered. He turned to Kristen. "Anything for you?"

"… Huevos-rancheros-wrap-venti-chai-tea-and-a-double-espresso," Kristen added in a rush.

It was still early enough that the coffee shop was nearly deserted, but for a suited man with his laptop and a waitress counting her tips from an overnight shift. Kristen slid down into a seat in the corner, letting her head fall to the table in exhaustion. Sam lumbered into the seat opposite her and she sat bolt upright, enfolding herself in her arms and leaning back against the wall.

"Are you okay?"

"Just haven't gotten any sleep."

The exchange hung there for a few minutes and at first they ate their meal in silence. Kristen all but inhaled her huevos rancheros and downed her espresso like a shot of tequila, then politely asked Sam for money so that she could get another one. Sam turned his thoughts to how they should confront the voodoo priestess Kristen was supposed to meet with.

Dad had taken them to Louisiana once for a few weeks. While he and Dean had been hunting a pack of werewolves deeply entrenched in swampy bayou area, Sam had contented himself with fishing off the shores of Lake Ponchartrain and reading _The Once and Future King_. When he'd finished that, he'd reluctantly taken Dean's advice and researched voodoo activity in the area. The practitioners he met believed devoutly in the superstitions, but seemed more interested in blessing rather than cursing. Those interested in curses were usually taken care of by a hunting couple that operated out of New Orleans.

He vaguely wondered if Dean had thought of that already.

"Kristen, did Dean make any calls while I was asleep?"

Again, her back stiffened as though she were startled.

"Yeah, but I kind of ignored it," she said slowly, going in for another long sip of her tea. "He was talking to the Lafitte brothers. And those guys are supposed to be dead pirates." She raised an eyebrow. "Or are they?"

"They're a couple of hunters we know," Sam told her. "Listen, before we go, is something the matter? You're jumping at every little thing I do."

"I'm just…" She breathed a very deep sigh. "You make me nervous."

"Nervous?" he said, a little confused. He leaned forward; as he predicted, Kristen hunched farther down into her seat.

"Yeah," she shrugged, keeping her straw at her lips. "I mean, you're all nice to me and a good guy and as far as I can tell, Adam already seems to look up to you. But you did just murder my best friend in cold blood."

"Are you serious?" Sam asked between clenched teeth, his voice rising a little. The caffeine deprived people in line didn't notice, but the man in the fine suit shot them a glare. "She tried to kidnap you! That hellhound nearly tore Adam to pieces! You remember, Adam, _your boyfriend_?"

"Logically, I know that. My mind hasn't exactly adjusted yet," Kristen replied in a small voice. "I just didn't think you and Dean made it a habit of killing people."

"We don't!" Sam insisted. "We do what we have to to hunt things, to protect people. To protect you!" Sam's voice had risen a couple of notches and the barista at the counter might have come over to quiet him, had Sam not been so tall and his muscles so bulgy.

"You were so detached," Kristen said. "I didn't think anyone could be that calm when they'd just taken another person's life."

"Janice lied to you and manipulated you," Sam pointed out. He lowered his voice to a hiss as he spoke the next words. "She was going to present you to the Devil on a silver platter."

"You guys were casual," she continued, "like you'd done it a million times. I'm scared you're going to make Adam like that."

Sam could've sworn he'd just had the life knocked out of him. He realized that without being cognizant of it, he had the exact same concern. Perhaps even the same one John Winchester had. The concern that, despite his normal childhood, Adam could grow just as angry and cold as his brothers if he continued to hunt with them.

"There wasn't anything else to do," Sam defended, though he knew it was a lie. A long time ago, Sam would have rather done anything than kill someone for his own safety. But family… that was a different matter entirely.

Kristen timidly shoved her cupcake away.

"I think I ate too fast," she murmured.

* * *

Although White Castle had little tiny burgers, Dean was okay with that. He liked to buy them in bulk. And _boy_ was he hungry.

"Sack meal number four," he ordered. "The one with 20 sliders and four fries and I'd also like a large Coke. You want anything?" he said, turning to Adam.

"Oh, you know… the same."

"Think you can handle that?" Dean asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Sure," Adam shrugged. "Your leftovers too."

Ah, a challenge. Dean liked those too.

The cashier did not seem overly surprised at their large order and had it out to them in less than seven minutes. The joint was fairly deserted, but for a group of kids in a corner booth giggling with reddened eyes and a pair of Asian men moaning and eating with their eyes closed. Instinctively, Dean took the seat at the opposite corner, his back to the wall to keep an eye on his surroundings. Adam laid out the food on the table and they eyed each other warily before digging in.

"What do you know about Kristen's aunt?" Dean asked as he finished off his third slider.

"Not a whole lot," Adam said, biting into his fifth. Kid didn't know how to pace himself. "She was the town eccentric. Kristen spent most of her summers living wherever her aunt was."

"Seems a little weird," Dean pondered, "she didn't figure out she was Haley Joel-ing until now."

"She always used to see stuff when we were kids. I remember this one time…" Adam started grinning. He began to recall a particularly funny instance where Kristen had insisted that the town war hero Jim Bob Harris went to her church every Sunday, even though everyone knew he'd died from friendly fire in the Gulf War. He'd gone to church with her for their bet, but had just spilled communion wine all over her older sister.

Adam trailed off when he looked at Dean's lackluster face and stuffed another slider in his mouth. "Never mind."

"Nah, go on with the story," Dean encouraged, and it dawned on Adam that he was being interrogated again.

"Are you…" Adam set down his burger. "Do you think she's lying, that this is some elaborate scheme?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," Dean said, popping a fry into his mouth. Thoughts of Ruby flooded his mind and froze on the image of her knowing grin as she shut the doors at the convent in Ilchester while Sam killed Lilith.

"Well, she's not," Adam said, tearing into another burger. "I've known her my entire life, sandbox and all. She's just used to doing what she's told."

Dean left it at that. Picking at Adam was just going to make him more stubborn. It _certainly_ hadn't helped to question Ruby's allegiance. Dean let them go on with their eating contest in amiable silence, but something in the way Adam chewed around the edges of his burger reminded him of their father, and he felt something he hadn't felt in a long time: the urge to talk to his brother.

Unfortunately, it took him ten minutes of chewing in silence to think of a non-Apocalypse topic of conversation that they could talk about. It couldn't be their eating contest, because that would be an acknowledgement that they had set up their own stupid eating contest. And to be perfectly honest, ever since he'd lost that poker game and 50 years of his life, Dean was a lot more conscious of the possibility of acid-reflux.

He finally decided on Jessica Alba, because every heterosexual man on the planet has an opinion about Jessica Alba. Adam, however, beat him to the punch.

"What's the plan?" he asked, belching a little as he said the words, "once we get to Louisiana?"

"Find this priestess," Dean informed him. "Sam and I are gonna look up some hunters we know for recon."

"Who are they?"

"Brother and sister team. Call themselves the Lafitte Brothers."

"Brothers?" Adam said, pausing as he stuffed the last bite of Slider No. 18 into his mouth.

"Well, she's a really butch lesbian," Dean explained, still hastening to finish Slider No. 15, "so they stuck with the name."

Dean smiled a little to himself—Stana Lafitte wasn't actually that butch. Sure, she wore men's clothes and played softball on the weekends, but she had possibly the _greatest_ ass Dean had ever seen, with the exception of a few strippers.

"Are all hunters siblings?" Adam asked tentatively, raising an eyebrow.

"Some people hunt alone," Dean said. He shrugged and set down his burger. "Some are couples. Some people hunt with their kid. Dad and I worked that way while Sam was at Stanford." Dean leaned back in his seat and stretched his arms over the back of the booth. "It works for families cause it's a, uh, a generational thing. You live that way, raise your kids that way. Once you're in, always pulls you back. And then you either die bloody… you go crazy… or you've got a bottle in your hand til your heart stops beating."

"… That was a great pep talk," Adam deadpanned after a gulp of his soda. There was a moment of pregnant silence. "You think after all this is over—"

"I don't think that far anymore," Dean replied gravely, shaking his head. Contemplating if he'd survive, if Sam and Bobby would be okay, if Cas was getting angel-boarded, if he himself would end up in Heaven or back in Hell with a knife in his hand, it all made Dean a little sick.

"I meant the burgers," Adam specified. "You gonna eat your fries?"

... Cheeky little punk.


	11. Orpheus Lives Happily Ever After

A/N: I just joined Twitter almost exclusively to follow two people: Misha Collins and Feminist Hulk.

A bit of background: Marie Laveau was a free black woman in New Orleans in the 1800s. She's known as the Queen of voodoo. As for the Lalaurie mansion, it's a really famous New Orleans haunting and the specifics will be elaborated on in future chapters, if you don't already know the legend. It's pretty gruesome.

* * *

**Chapter 11: In Which Orpheus Lived Happily Ever After**

* * *

"So what the fuck did I just agree to anyway?"

Rufus had foregone the glass Bobby had offered and was downing the Johnny Walker Blue straight from the bottle.

Bobby sat silently at the wheel, trying to select his words with caution. As they approached Laramie, lightning storms were illuminating the sky and the land in brighter and brighter bunches. Empty fields where cows should have been grazing raced by, brown and wilted.

"It's a big bang job," he finally said. "I'd do it myself; only brought you for that gangly pair of legs."

"You misogynistic animal," Rufus chuckled.

"Ever meet a gal named Jayma McGee?" Bobby asked a few hours into the ride to Wyoming.

"Never met her," Rufus said. "But a buddy of mine ran into her about two years ago, Duncan Anderson."

Duncan was a mutual acquaintance; he'd sold Bobby a couple of good charms. Bobby realized that he hadn't heard anything from Duncan in about two years.

"Town in Arizona was ripe with demonic omens," Rufus continued, "he and his partner went in. Turns out it was just a little witch, but she got the better of 'em. She released swarms of locusts and scorpions, five times the regular size."

"Sounds biblical," Bobby commented.

"I think it was one of those Seals," Rufus pondered. "Whole town was dead in about eight hours."

"What happened to Duncan?" Bobby said.

"Stung by a scorpion," Rufus answered, "but he managed to drag his ass to my house before he died, gave me the witch's name. Jayma McGee."

"You go after her?"

"She's been off grid for the last twenty years, far as I could tell. Why, you find her?"

* * *

"What's wrong with knocking on the door?"

"That's where the gift shop is. Mama Oya will be back in the main house."

Kristen rattled the iron gate and shouted down the narrow alley again. The afternoon sun was beating down on the four travelers with the added intensity of New Orleans humidity. For Dean, the cramped and tiny streets of the French Quarter, with the buildings crammed together and their loopy European architecture, made everything worse.

"So, this priestess," Sam was saying, examining the window display, "she was your aunt's landlord? You know her?"

Kristen kept rattling the bars.

"Jayma moved down here after Hurricane Katrina," she told him, leaning her forehead against the gate. "I stayed here during the summer and worked in a repopulation bureau. Course I didn't help much since most of the people on my lists weren't scheduled to be coming back and… Damn it!" Kristen banged her head on the bars. "I bet I was talking to a bunch of dead people."

"How does seeing dead people escape your notice for twenty years?" Dean grumbled, taking a seat on the steps to the gift shop. He peered into the darkly lit room and saw a young woman chewing green bubble gum and basking beneath a shaking fan. Adam was leaning against her desk, trying to ask her where Mama Oya was, but she was engrossed in a copy of _Bitch_ magazine.

Dean hated the South. He didn't enjoy sweating his guts out and even with all the bikinis, he didn't like the beach. Sand was awful difficult to clean out of, oh, _anything_. That fan in the gift shop was looking so inviting… and the chick wasn't bad either.

"I'm gonna go see what's taking Adam so long—"

But Adam was already striding out.

"Ghost tour starts at eight," he said, "but Oya is out on a call. Cashier said she should be back for dinner around six."

"Two hours to kill," Sam pondered. He turned to Dean. "Might as well find a place to crash."

"I'd kinda like to find Bourbon Street," Dean said, standing up. He looked around at the street signs, trying to remember how many blocks ago he'd seen the people with the beads and the cocktails wandering around.

"It's two blocks south," Kristen called out, her face still pressed against the bars. "Bring me back a daiquiri."

"Kristen," Adam said, taking her shoulders and attempting to gently pull her away from the gate. "Let's just go somewhere, sit down—"

Kristen shrugged away and meandered into the street.

"I have been trapped in that car, doing Sudoku and listening to you and Dean belch and moan for the past ten hours!" she squalled, stomping her foot, clenching her fists at her side. "I haven't slept in like a week, I'm a freak of nature, God is dead and I would just like to stand here miserably until she gets… Pascal?"

The three brothers tuned in unison to see what Kristen had recognized. A tall, bronze-skinned man was heading toward them on the sidewalk with a net slung over his shoulder. He stopped in his tracks when he saw Kristen.

"Krissy! Dat you?" He spoke with a thick Cajun accent and dropped the net to receive Kristen, who'd leapt into his open arms smiling like an idiot. "I ain't seen you in so long, c'mere!"

And then he tipped her back and planted an open-mouthed kiss on her, sliding one of his arms lower down her back.

"_What the hell?_" Adam exclaimed, drawing out every syllable. Sam and Dean stepped up next to him, throwing their shoulders back. Kristen laced her fingers in his tousled hair and pushed his head away.

"Pascal, this is my boyfriend," she said breathlessly, still smiling. "Adam, this is Pascal, he's one of Mama Oya's other tenants."

"Boyfriend?" Pascal echoed, leaning in as if to nuzzle. "T'ought we talked about this. When you in the Quarter, when you can smell the gumbo cookin', you're mine."

"Too bad the only thing we can smell is Old Man Whiskey over there," Dean said, nodding to the bearded homeless man clutching a glass bottle and nodding off on a stoop across the street. "I'm Adam's brother, Dean," he added, grabbing Pascal's hand off of Kristen's waist for a strong handshake.

"And I'm his brother, Sam," Sam interjected, brushing back his jacket so that Ruby's knife flashed at his waist. Adam threw an arm around Kristen's shoulders and the brothers had Pascal effectively surrounded.

"… When you start datin' the Jets?" Pascal asked, raising an eyebrow. "You all ain't gonna start dancin' and snappin' your fingers, right?"

"We're here to see Oya," Kristen explained in a low voice, trying to contain her mortification.

"She's out," Pascal said, picking up his net and pulling out his keys.

"We heard," Adam replied, narrowing his eyes. "We'll be back later."

"Now wait a minute," the Cajun insisted, opening the gate. "You guys want a beer, hang out at my place til she gets back? No hard feelings about the, uh…" Pascal looked at Adam and puckered his lips just a little.

"He's fine," Kristen breezed, nudging Adam toward the entrance. His body went stiff and he grimaced, but he allowed her to drag him along.

Dean and Sam hesitated a moment. Dean was the first to follow.

"This dude better have outstanding AC," he muttered.

* * *

Mama Oya Williquette Keneday arrived about an hour later, spattered in blood. Apocalypse had all the alligators in a frenzy, she explained, and a couple of fisherman by the Honey Island swamp didn't have money for a doctor to stitch their wounds. She quickly ushered her new guests into her house behind the gift shop, shutting down Dean's gruff demands for her to sit down and get right to business.

Oya left them in silence while she made tea, after briefly clasping Kristen's hand and offering her condolences for Jayma's death.

Adam and Kristen bickered under their breath for ten minutes about Pascal before Oya swept back in with a tray. On it were a brass kettle, four green and white porcelain teacups, and a purple coffee mug. Oya, now dressed a bloodless tunic and flowing skirt, sat in a rickety chair opposite the couch where Sam, Dean, Adam and Kristen were squished together. She took a few silent sips of her tea before settling her eyes on Sam.

"Sobriety's treatin' you well," she started. Sam's eyes widened. "I'm a healer by trade and I have healed my share of junkies. How long's it been since your last binge?"

"… Like a month," Sam admitted after a moment.

"I have something that will ease the cravings—"

"Listen, lady," Dean cut in, "we're not looking for any folksy magic to cure all ails." He wrenched himself from the dusty couch cushions to amble around the room, poking at various portraits on the wall, the tables with herbs and jars and keys and other weird odds and ends. "I take it you have some mystical mojo workings and you must be pretty harmless since none of the local hunters have ganked you. And since you heard about the Apocalypse, you probably know that we have some other things on our plate right now. So, our bottom line is this…" Dean leaned over Kristen and pointed at her. "Can you fix her?"

"The girl's not a windup toy," Oya replied caustically, raising an eyebrow.

"Actually, I kind of agree with Dean's phrasing," Kristen said.

"I kept telling Jayma," Oya said, clicking her tongue in disapproval, "keeping you in the dark was a mistake. It cost you more than just years of training." Oya's eyes wandered to Adam. He faltered under her powerful gaze and curled his arm protectively around Kristen, who was leaning forward.

"I can still control it, right?" she asked hopefully.

"His dying helped," Oya said, nodding to Adam again.

"Helped?" Sam shot up in indignation. Oya was a short woman, but she didn't shrink from Sam's tall, menacing figure. "Explain how it helped!"

"You started dreaming about this little dreamboat after he died," Oya alleged. "Right? Jayma said you had recurring erotic visions of him—"

"Yes, yes I did," Kristen interrupted in a hurry, her face going crimson in a second, "your point has been made, please stop talking about it."

"Erotic?" Adam asked, a grin overtaking his face. "Recurring? So, you had a dream about me every night—?"

"Not every night," Kristen said in a strained voice, patting his knee. "Sometimes I grabbed a random guy off the street to sate my lust."

"Well, we all know how much you love making out with dudes on the street," Adam shot back, retracting his arm and folding his arms over his chest.

"Are you seriously still mad about that?"

"_Nah_, why would I be mad about—"

"Children!" Dean shouted. "Shut your traps! The lady's trying to talk."

There was an awkward pause. Oya was trying to contain her laughter.

"His soul reached out to you," she explained when her giggles had diminished. "It forged a strong connection with the spiritual plane, the first step for a Seer to take. I can't _'fix'_ you—but I can train you."

"Sign me up!" Kristen chirped. "Do or do not, there is no try!"

"You'll need a full night's sleep," Oya said. She stood up and hovered over Kristen, handing her the purple mug. "This tea has anise extract in it. It'll keep you inside your own head." She drew herself to full height, clasping her hands together, and turned to Dean. "You're all welcome to Jayma's quarters, free of charge. I haven't touched her rooms since she left for San Diego."

* * *

Resentment was still boiling in the pit of Adam's stomach. He'd spent the whole of high school watching Kristen pine over another guy—now the image of Pascal kissing her was seared in his brain.

The resentment evaporated when he and Kristen stepped into Jayma's old room. Nothing was out of place, or rather, nothing was different. The last time Jayma had been in this room, she'd been alive. Drawers were still open, jewelry lay scattered over her vanity and the sheets on the bed were still twisted and mussed.

Adam stood off to the side as Kristen stepped haltingly toward the closet. She pulled out the first shirt her hand brushed and held it close to her. Adam enfolded her in a tight embrace and she shuddered, unable even to cry.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I _want_ to hate her, but…."

"Don't apologize," he said simply. He reached over with one arm and flipped the light off. Dim sunlight streamed through the cracks in the thick blue drapes, allowing Adam to see enough to sink onto the bed, pulling Kristen down on top of him. He laid her head on his chest and stroked her hair. "Just try to get some rest."

"I don't want to," she confessed. "She's in Hell, Adam. What if that stuff doesn't work, what if I see her, if I go there?"

Adam kicked off his shoes, then reached down and pulled off her sneakers. He grabbed the comforter and yanked it over both of them, even in the still heat of the room.

"You ever hear that Greek myth about Orpheus?" he asked. Kristen sighed and shook her head, grabbing a pillow. "It's about this guy, this musician. His girlfriend Eurydice dies, and he goes down to the underworld to bring her back. He goes to the king and queen, begs them to let Eurydice go and plays his music for them. The queen is so moved, she lets him take Eurydice back. He takes her hand and leads her out of the underworld."

He slid one arm beneath Kristen's head, using his other to twine his fingers with hers.

"I'm Orpheus," he finished. "I'll always be here to bring you back."

Kristen clung to him and in a few minutes she was fast asleep. Adam prayed he'd never have to tell her the real ending.

* * *

"I don't trust that old lady as far as I can throw her!"

"You could actually throw her pretty far, Dean."

Sam was sorely not in the mood to deal with Dean's rampant suspicions, but he couldn't fault his brother. Witches, whether or not they called themselves priestesses, were generally iffy to mix with. Sam had almost decided against leaving Adam and Kristen alone, but Dean was resolute on going to see the Lafitte brothers and not being, as he termed it, 'glorified babysitters'.

"That whole family is rotten," Dean seethed, knocking past passerby on the sidewalk with gusto. "If Kristen wasn't so delusional, I wouldn't believe her doe-eyed innocent act. That grandma, you said Cas thought she was a creep, and the aunt, this Jayma chick: pulling way too many strings not to have blood on her hands. Crowley knew her, and that means she was in deep with the demons."

"Dad must've thought she was okay," Sam mentioned.

"Doesn't say anything about her in his journal," Dean countered. Sam thought that could be chalked up to his interest in hiding Adam, but didn't bring it up. Dean abruptly stopped walking and turned to Sam. "Isn't it just too big a coincidence? Our brother falls in tortured adolescent love with some girl with the mystical ability to solve all our problems."

"You're not seriously suggesting that thing again," Sam said uncomfortably.

"You mean Kristen getting down and dirty with Satan? Why else are we here?" Dean asked in disbelief. "We _should_ be with Bobby, going after Pestilence, but _you_ insisted on this little road trip. Why is this worth anything if she can't put Lucifer back in his cage?"

"Gabriel is going to kill him," Sam asserted, as if it solved everything. "Besides Michael, he might be the only thing capable of killing Lucifer, because we sure as hell weren't able to."

"Thousands of years puttering around on the sidelines," Dean snapped, "you honestly think he's got the cajones to do it?"

"I think he knows Lucifer better than we do. I think he has a weapon that will kill Lucifer. And I think he loves his porn and his candy way too much to let Lucifer take them away."

"… You have a point there," Dean conceded, and they continued on their way.

The Lafitte brothers had designated their meeting spot in Louisiana's oldest bar, the aptly named Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop. It truly looked like it was falling apart. Half the adobe was ripped away from the walls with faded maroon bricks peeking out, the flimsy gray wood doors were held on by exhausted hinges, and the windows shooting out from the water stained roof were boarded up.

Remembering Stana's advice, that tourists flocked to the piano player, Dean chose a seat in a far back corner. The front of the bar didn't even have electricity, so Dean had to flick out a lighter for the candle at their table. He and Sam hunched close together, warily scanning everyone in the joint. It was only mildly crowded and the atmosphere was so grim, it might as well have been a Midwestern wake.

A cute little blonde took their drink orders (whiskey for Dean, beer for Sam) and they sat in silence, waiting for their fellow hunters.

"I thought we were on the same page," Sam admitted after a while. "I thought we were here to help Adam; kid's not experienced enough to protect himself yet."

"Dad'd love that," Dean said bitterly. "Keeps the kid hidden away, kid dies and gets caught up in this mess."

"All roads lead to hunting," Sam mused.

Dean turned to him, about to disagree, but the Lafitte brothers entered the bar at that moment. Stana and Kyle Lafitte had a penchant for dressing as the other's mirror image. Stana was wearing a blue muscle shirt and black jeans and she spotted Sam and Dean first. Kyle was wearing loose blue jeans with long-sleeved black shirt that read 'NEW ORLEANS SAINTS' in cracked gold letters. He snapped his fingers at the bartender and gestured to Sam and Dean's table before he and his sister took their seats opposite the Winchesters.

"Been a long time, boys," Stana began, folding her elbows on the table, a faint smile on her lips. Her biceps were in excellent shape and showed off an anti-possession ward tattoo that Dean hadn't seen when they'd originally met.

"Far, far, far too long," Dean agreed, smiling impishly.

And they proceeded to get the necessary pleasantries out of the way. Kyle asked about Stanford; Sam asked about Kyle's real estate project, which had ground to a halt two years before and taken a backseat to his hunting duties. Stana gave her condolences for John's death; Dean gave his condolences for Stana and Kyle's parents, who'd fallen prey to a demon out of the Devil's Gate a couple of years ago.

"Heard you killed that Lilith bitch," Kyle mentioned and Sam sank into his seat with shame. "Man, I don't care what kind of shit that opened up, good for you. You just did what we couldn't."

"What do you mean?" Sam pressed.

"Lilith's the one who killed our folks," Stana elaborated, going on to describe how Lilith had breezed through the South and killed all the hunters worth knowing. Kyle had tracked her for a year before she became too difficult to follow and he'd given up on killing her.

"What brings you to town," Kyle finally asked, "besides the booze and the women?"

"There a case you think we can't handle?" Stana said, sliding away Dean's whiskey to down a gulp herself.

"That's not it at all," Sam shook his head.

"It's complicated, but we're here to see a priestess, Oya Keneday," Dean told them. "What can you tell us about her?"

Stana and Kyle shared a knowing look. Stana just shook her head and returned to her drink; Kyle took a deep breath.

"Well, she ain't _human_," he said, "if that's what you're asking."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sam asked. "What is she?"

"She's not an angel, a demon, a shape-shifter, a vampire, a spirit, a ghoul, a changeling or a zombie," Kyle reeled off, checking the mental list of everything he'd ever theorized her to be. "She hasn't aged a single day since I met her, I was four years old. Way mom told it, she's the one who delivered us."

"We think she's one of those pagan gods," Stana interjected, "but she never has told us straight up what she is."

"No mixing with the dark arts or anything?" Dean probed.

"Just old time voodoo religion," Kyle answered. "We think she's been in New Orleans at least since Marie LeVeau was born."

"What do you know about her tenants?" Sam asked uncertainly.

"Guess even gods have gotta eat, and she owns a lot of real estate here in the Quarter," Stana shrugged. "What are you guys here to see her for anyway?"

And thus proceeded a long, complicated explanation of how John Winchester had hidden their brother from them and he'd been resurrected by forces unseen. Sam and Dean chose to withhold the Seer and demon aspect for the time being, instead lying and saying that Oya had been recommended by Adam's girlfriend to make sure his resurrection hadn't toyed with him. The last thing anybody needed to hear was that the world was close to destruction and they were pinning their hopes on wayward demons and angels.

"So we're just basically sitting around, twiddling our thumbs," Dean concluded. "Thought about finding a case, but, uh, you can probably handle them." He shot Stana a grin at those last words.

"Dean Winchester: God's gift to hunter," she exaggerated, shaking her head. "We're fine, thanks."

"Actually…" Kyle turned to his sister and they mouthed a tense conversation that Dean and Sam couldn't make out. Kyle eventually turned to them, looking eager. "We could probably use your help on the Lalaurie job."

Sam choked a little bit on his beer and Dean had to pat him on the back until foam had stopped leaking from his mouth.

"The Lalaurie mansion?" Sam asked eagerly once he'd regained his voice. "That's the most famous haunting in this city, even Dad wanted in on that job. We're up for it, we'll help any way we can!"

"… _nerd_," Dean muttered.


	12. Slaying Is Cheating

A/N: It's been a while. I'm sorry. My excuse: Netflix had all four seasons of Battlestar Galactica. It had to be conquered. Also, say Battlestar Galactica ten times fast. It's not a tongue twister or anything, but it's FUN!

Information: Beignets (pronounced ben-yays) are pastries made from deep-fried dough and sprinkled with powder sugar, served in New Orleans. [Children and Christians please skip this next sentence] They taste like giving Jesus a blowjob, a.k.a. delicious.

Note: If anyone is confused by the last scene, just consult the season 5 episode "The Song Remains the Same".

Another Note: I fully encourage you to Google Madame Lalaurie, but in case you don't want to bother, just know that I've told a very exaggerated version of the story, albeit the traditional one. Except for the one about the little girl getting pushed off of the roof, that one's got documented evidence. Fun fact: Up until a few days ago, the property belonged to Nicolas Cage.

Another Note That Is Probably Not Necessary: Around my third proofreading (although I was tired, so there will still be errors galore), I realized that Dean's behavior could be interpreted as romatic interest in Kristen. So let me just assure you: Hells no.

* * *

**Chapter 12: Slaying Implies Superpowers. Slaying is Cheating.**

* * *

Through a haze of sleep and confusion, Kristen became aware of her body again. She'd been so deep in sleep that it was almost surprising to realize she had bones, muscle, tissue… she kept her eyes squeezed shut as she began to stretch. She thrust her arms out as if they were a wing span, clenched her toes straight, thrust her torso up off of the bed. That was when she felt a burly, callused hand slipping beneath her shirt and glide deftly between her breasts.

It still took her a minute to open her eyes. In that minute, the hand began to circle each breast, teasing and rubbing until her nipples until they stood up like top hats. Two hard lips brushed her cheek, hot breath blowing over her neck.

Her eyes fluttered open to see the man's jet black hair disappearing from her vision as he bowed his head to plant a kiss at the base of her throat. She moaned and lifted her fingers to entangle them in his hair, guiding his hand lower until his thumb grazed her navel. He lifted his head and kissed her, his mouth demanding and Kristen all too happy to obey.

"Oh God…" she breathed when he turned his attention back to her breasts. With lazy strength he tore away the buttons and used his tongue to trace a path of searing heat all over her chest.

"Call me Dean," he instructed as she gasped in delight. Kristen surged against him, pressing desperately to his heat, her body already slick with Louisiana humidity and torrid yearning. As Dean took her breast in his mouth, tracing a number of different geometrical shapes with his tongue, Kristen felt a second hand slide to the clasp of her jeans. The fingers were more slender than Dean's, just as callused and worn. She reached behind her wildly and her fingers grasped Sam's bicep. He was curled against her, brushing her hair away to leave gentle kisses at the base of her neck. His erection pressed against her with insatiable longing and she could feel the vibrations in his chest as he groaned.

"What… what about Adam?" Kristen managed to ask as Sam's experienced fingers dove beneath her jeans to stroke her far too gently.

"He'll be fine," Sam chuckled and he captured Kristen's mouth in a passionate kiss, drawing her away from Dean. Dean greedily wrapped his arms around her and sucked at her neck, almost biting.

"You taste so good," his voice rumbled against her skin.

The door flew open. It took Kristen a moment to even notice and when she looked up, she didn't even bother to push the four pleasuring hands away from her. Adam stood in the doorway, frowning in disappointment.

"You guys started without me," he lamented before shrugging off his jacket and lifting his shirt up over his head in one fluid motion. The sunlight shimmered over his body, caressing his rippling abs and broad shoulders. He knelt at the end of the bed and grabbed a hold of Kristen's jeans, tearing them off. As Dean continued to suckle her breasts and Sam delved his tongue into her mouth, Adam took her knee and hooked it over his shoulder, kissing and licking her inner thigh, working slowly upward…

And then Kristen woke up, for real. She reached across the bed to find Adam was gone. It took her the better part of two hours to find the courage to get up.

* * *

"Where's Adam?"

"I thought he was in there with you. You were making… sounds…"

Kristen frowned at Dean and took the seat opposite him at the dining table. A box of beignets sat open between them with eight of the initial dozen gone. Dean turned his gaze back to the New Orleans Gazette he was scanning, unaware of the fact that the lower half of his face was coated in powdered sugar. Kristen neglected to mention it and poured herself a glass of orange juice.

"Oya brought all this stuff," Dean informed her. "She wants you in her apartment in like ten minutes." He nodded to the cuckoo clock mounted on the wall behind her, which read ten minutes until eight o'clock.

"Is Adam with Sam?" Kristen guessed.

"Probably," Dean said. "Sam's off doing research with a colleague of ours. Maybe he took the kid with."

"So Adam's out there slaying? Or whatever it is you guys do…"

It was Dean's turn to frown.

"_Slaying_ implies superpowers. _Slaying_ is _cheating_," he replied curtly. "We're hunters." He vindictively grabbed another beignet and stuffed it in his mouth, brushing another coat of sugar over his face.

"That's really mature coming from someone with a powdered sugar beard," Kristen said, rolling her eyes. She stood up and grabbed a little green apple from the platter at the center of the table and stalked off toward the door. When she opened it, a gust of hot wind blew into the room and she paused. "I don't mean to be hostile. I just like having a live boyfriend."

* * *

Kristen's comment weighed heavily on Dean for the next few days. Mostly on the night that the Lalaurie mansion was schedule to be salted and burned.

The Lalaurie mansion was a sinister looking gray building on the corner of Royal and Governor Nicholls Streets, originally constructed to be the abode of visiting French royalty. However, in the late 1800's, a society woman named Delphine Lalaurie had taken up residence in the house. On the third floor, she had kept a secret torture chamber for slaves. She'd break bones and set them at odd angles, chop off arms and sew them on to legs, drill holes in skulls, mutilate genitals, and tie their own intestines around their owner's waists. As he reviewed the case notes, Dean considered the likelihood that Madame Lalaurie had taken over Hell upon Alastair's death.

It was a sordid and shocking tale that the locals told to jazz up and scare tourists. Among hunters, it was almost legendary. Many had dedicated themselves to ridding the Lalaurie mansion of the its ghosts and died at the hands of the slaves who had suffered so long under Madame Lalaurie's sadistic rule. Kyle Lafitte had finally gotten permission from the home's owner to burn the sucker down (apparently the owner was in great need of insurance money).

Sam and Adam were to salt and fuel the ground floor. Stana and Kyle would do the same on the second floor. Dean had volunteered himself for the third floor.

It was close to eleven when the team began their work. Everyone in town would be at the bars, tipsy but not drunk enough to commit inebriated mischief. Dean kept himself on a mild alert level, spreading salt across the carpets before dumping half a tank of gas all over, splashing some on the walls and over the bedroom furniture for good effect.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a puff of smoke drifting toward him. He whirled around to see a dandy gentleman in a green vest and black trousers lighting up an old school tobacco pipe, leaning against the frame of the walk-in closet.

"Relax," the man drawled, flicking the match down into a puddle of gasoline where it dissolved. "Intangible, remember?"

"Then what's the point of the pipe?" Dean said carefully, flicking the safety off his gun and aiming it squarely at the spirit's chest.

"Habit," the spirit shrugged. "You develop them when you've been sentenced as long as I have. Pardon me; I seem to have forgotten my manners completely." He extended his hand for an incorporeal hand shake. "Doctor Louis Lalaurie."

"The guy who actually married that crazy bitch?" Dean identified, raising an eyebrow.

"Ah, it is _ma chére_ Delphine of whom you speak," Lalaurie said wistfully, his eyes glazing over as he smiled. "Such a lovely creature."

Dean pulled the trigger. Louis Lalaurie disappeared in a burst and Dean hurried out of the bedroom, toward the stairs.

"She was born without a soul," came Lalaurie's voice from behind him. Dean growled and turned around to see that Lalaurie had reappeared in the doorway of another bedroom. "Otherwise she'd be the one keeping vigil over those Negro spirits. And they do make such savage spirits, don't you agree? Barbarism is in their nature."

"You're gonna burn you sick son of a bitch," Dean said and he shot at Lalaurie again, several times, each shot yielding warm shells that pinged to the ground dangerously close to the gasoline puddles. He blinked a few times. The fumes had to be getting to him; Lalaurie shouldn't have been able to re-form that fast.

He started toward the stairs again, only to see Lalaurie pop up right in front of him.

"Delphine never had a chance," he said, the pipe gone. He had his hands in his pockets and he was staring sadly at the floor. "I loved her madly, but… Women have so many secrets. Even they don't know half of their own." Dean cocked his gun one more time as Lalaurie looked up to meet his eyes. "Perhaps you ought to tell your brother that."

"Dean!" Sam's voice shot up the stairs and Dean took aim one last time.

"Quit yakking," Dean scoffed and with that last shot, Louis Lalaurie was finally gone.

* * *

Adam would die (again) before admitting it, but being alone in a haunted house scared the shit out of him, family business be damned. Sam was _supposed_ to be up here with him, but after he heard a couple of rounds go off upstairs, he'd rushed to check on Dean. Leaving Adam alone. Awesome.

It didn't seem like your typical haunted mansion. The foyer, where Adam stood clutching a sawed-off and trying not to tremble, was narrow and had a gleaming black and white checkerboard pattern. He could see into the other rooms from his position, each large with a gray and yellow marble fireplace and tall windows. The creepiest thing about them was décor, a strange mix of chunky, velvet-and-leather furniture, marble busts and useless mahogany pedestals, and cheap looking motel scenery art.

He heard something echo through the halls. It wasn't Sam's sasquatch steps or the clinking of Stana's iron jewelry. It sounded like a child's weeping.

Adam forced himself to take a few steps forward. He leaned toward the doorway and peered out. The mansion wrapped around a brick courtyard, much like the one behind Mama Oya's apartments. Beyond a few wretched looking trees and plants in broken pots, it was empty. Adam squinted and his eyes made out what it was in the darkness: a little girl in a coarse red dress crouched next to the wall. Poor little thing…

"Hey," he said softly, kneeling down next to her. "You got get out of here."

The girl kept weeping; one of her hands came away from her face and brushed a patch of brown curls behind her ear. She looked at him warily.

"C'mon," Adam urged, shifting the sawed-off under one arm and offering her his other. Her sobs tapered off and she took hand. Her entire hand could fit in his palm. He closed his fingers and stood up, pulling her with him.

That was when he saw what he should have seen all along. When she drew herself to full height, it became readily apparent that the entire other side of her body was mangled. Her other arm and both her legs were broken and the goddamn _bones_ were sticking out from her skin. The other half of her face was flat, as though it had been crushed by a fall. Her dress wasn't red; it was white and completely saturated with blood.

"Jesus," Adam snapped under his breath and he yanked his hand away. It was covered in a sticky black substance. Ectoplasm.

The half of the little girl's face that was un-crushed smiled. Adam fumbled with the sawed-off and aimed it at her, but a sharp blast of air snapped across his hands and knocked it away. He felt it again against his stomach and he yelled when he felt it again across his left cheek, leaving a deep cut that bled freely down his neck. The little girl stepped toward him, extending her hand.

Adam reached into his back pocket and whipped out an iron chain. He whipped it across the little girl's form and she dissipated. Breathing hard, Adam wiped the ectoplasm onto his jeans and picked up his gun, stuffing the chain into his pocket.

"You okay?"

He looked up to see Stana Lafitte on the balcony.

"Ready to light a match," he replied, cocking his gun.

"We're almost done," she assured him. When she started toward the stairs, Adam saw the little girl's form behind her.

"_Look out!_" he shouted, taking aim. The little girl shrieked and Stana crouched into a ball, all but somersaulting down the steps. Adam's shot was wildly misfired and pinged off the railing. His next few shots were accurate and the girl was gone again.

He rushed over to Stana, who was splayed over the ground, and helped her up.

"You okay?" he asked and she lifted herself up by the banister.

"That bitch is getting toasted," she ground out. They rushed back into the narrow foyer and found Sam and Dean already there.

"What happened?" Sam started, but Stana was already heading toward the door.

"Let's just get out," she called over her shoulder.

"What about the flaming inferno?" Sam said, though he and the other guys still followed her as she shoved the doors open. Kyle was sorting through something in the back of his jeep and Stana joined him, elbowing her little brother out of the way. "I mean, I thought that was the whole point of this little jaunt."

Stana pulled out what she later identified as an anti-tank rocket launcher out of the trunk and set it on her shoulders, aiming it toward the house, which had begun to rumble with spirits aware of the hunters' intrusion.

"You guys might want to back up."

* * *

The New Orleans Fire Department had no idea how it happened, but the phone lines near the intersection of Royal and Governor Nicholls Streets had been compromised for nearly an hour that April night. By the time someone alerted them, there was very little left to save of the historic Lalaurie Mansion.

The brothers Winchester and Lafitte were at a bar very late into the night celebrating their victory.

"I thought that little girl was long gone," Kyle said, nursing his third beer.

"What was her deal?" Adam asked, resisting the urge to check out the gash on his face in the reflection of his glass. Sam opened his mouth, presumably to give a long winded explanation, but Stana clapped her hand over his mouth. "I didn't think that torture lady smooshed people to death."

"I got this," she slurred, a bit wasted, leaning in close to Adam. "So Madame Lalaurie is gettin' herself dolled up for a party and the slave girl is brushin' her hair. She catches one tangle after the other and so Lalaurie just goes fucking nuts. She takes a whip and goes crazy, chasing the little girl everywhere, yelling, screaming. All the neighbors can hear her, but what no one sees is Madame Lalaurie chase the girl up to the roof and shove her off." Stana downed the rest of her whiskey and slammed it on the table. "Pays a fine and everythin's hunky-dory."

"You can see why this case may be a little close to us," Kyle added, gesturing to his face, presumably referring to the deep black skin color he and his sister shared.

"So, your white whale's caught," Sam said. "What's next?"

"The apocalypse isn't enough for you?" Dean grumbled. He needed to call Bobby; the elder hunter had not yet checked back in on the status of Pestilence.

"I'm up for more," Adam shrugged.

"Yeah, the kid who gets roped in by the most cliché spirit trick in the book," Dean scoffed, "ready to get torn up some more."

"Kid saved my ass," Stana said, looping an arm around Adam. "Give him to me, I'll train him."

"I made a mistake," Adam said, glaring at Dean. "I learned. I won't make it again."

"Believe me, you'll make a whole lot more," Dean snapped, rising from the table. He grabbed his jacket off of his chair and stuffed on his arms.

"What's your problem?" Sam interjected, shifting back in his chair.

"My problem?" Dean turned, unable to figure out which brother to project his anger at. Sam was so insistent on Adam becoming a hunter; Adam was starting to get the hang of it. "My problem is a kid with half a college education and the cutest piece of tail in New Orleans waiting for him at home, is _here_, intent on joining one of the most miserable professions in existence."

"You hate it so much, stop doing it," Adam retorted.

"Dean, he's one of us," Sam said. "There's nothing he can do about it."

"My condolences," Dean growled, storming out the entrance into the night.

Sam thought about following him, but the threat of him finding a Jehovah's Witness in the Big Easy at this time of night was slim. It would just lead to more argument. He took one look at Adam's troubled face and hailed the waitress, the same perky blonde who had served them their first night there.

"Another round please," he requested, "on me."

"You kidding?" she laughed. "It's on me. Y'all look like you had a hell of a night." Her hand slid to the rungs of Adam's chair and she leaned in next to him. "My name's Lena Mae, you want anything else, you just let me know."

She winked at Adam and returned to the bar.

"No offense to your girlfriend," giggled Stana, "but _that_ is the cutest piece of tail in New Orleans."

* * *

John and Mary Winchester had stopped running. For a little while anyway.

The memory they had stepped into was snowy. It was unnerving to feel the crunch of fresh snow under their feet but not feel the biting cold in the air. Most of Heaven was unnerving. The sun was glowing ethereally from a spot right above them and there was a group of elementary schoolchildren shoveling snow all around a jungle gym to create a fort. A car nearby was blasting "Deck the Halls"at full volume.

John took Mary's hand and pulled her next to him on the park bench. He put his arm around her; she laid her head on his shoulder.

"I don't think Michael will catch us here," he whispered. "Not yet anyway."

"Will Jo and her dad be okay?" she wondered.

John couldn't answer. The last time they'd seen their travel companions, Castiel had decided to try the risky move of taking Bill and Jo with him on the run, to lead Michael off of John's scent. There was no way of contacting him. Their only hope of movement was Ash and he was… iffy, to say the least.

"This is a really boring Heaven," their mulleted companion complained, shuffling next to the bench to take a seat on the other side of John. "No chicks, no beer…" His eyes landed on the children's chaperone, who had an enormous thermos of hot chocolate she was using to stay warm. "Then again…"

"… I wish we'd gone with Pamela," Mary said. She closed her eyes and nudged her head to the spot above John's heart; she knew there wouldn't be a heartbeat, but she wanted to hear it more than anything else. "John… I want to talk about… how you raised our boys…"

"You want to spend eternity arguing about this?" he sighed.

"We may not even have eternity," she replied. She closed her eyes and no tears came. It was strange to function in this place, awake and aware, to go through the motions of life in death. "I just can't believe that you forced them to become hunters."

"I didn't force them!" John insisted, but he calmed himself. "I mean, I… I don't know how to _be_ without you. You should've just left me for dead, that night we left town."

Mary shivered, unwillingly remembering John's snapped neck and her father's glowing yellow eyes.

"We both made mistakes."

John would've gone on to apologize anyway, to beg Mary's forgiveness, to pick her up from the bench and push her into the snow and kiss her and tell her he loved her and hell, maybe they would have climbed into one of the nearby cars to make love. He would have.

But Mary heard a ringing in her ears before he could do any of that.

"John…"

And then they both saw him. Michael, glowing in his angelic glory, stepped out from behind a tree. Mary felt a rush of anger when she recognized the face he was wearing; he'd chosen the form of John, just after he'd gotten out of the Marines.

"Mary, get out of here," John ordered, springing up from the bench and standing in front of her protectively.

"I'm staying beside you," she said steadily, standing up next to him.

Neither of them paid attention to Ash, who'd leapt into a snowdrift to conceal himself.

"John, please," Michael pleaded, moving toward them. "Do not resist me. This is my duty."

"You can torture me, bring me back and kill me as many times as you want," John declared, never shrinking from Michael. "I will never say yes."

Mary could've sworn that Michael's eyes flickered to her, however briefly.

"I don't need to do any of that to you," Michael told them. "You agreed to this many years ago."

Before Mary could even grasp at her husband, he and Michael were gone, leaving her alone in the snow.


	13. I Didn't Expect the Spanish Inquisition

A/N: Sixth season Sam reminds me of Anya from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_. I appreciate him.

In other news, I scanned the entire new trailer for _I Am Number Four _and actually found Jake Abel for three seconds. Guess I'll have to go see it... sigh... but Quinn Fabray is in that movie too, so it's not a total loss!

Quick note: I decided a long time ago that Kristen was bilingual, the problem is that _I'm_ not. The Spanish translations (as well as the Latin) are at the bottom of the page. Just know that I shoved the dialogue I wrote into one of those Internet translators and the person I know who can actually speak Spanish is being supremely unhelpful by watching DBZ Abridged for the ninetieth time, so it's probably a terrible translation. In my defense, I took 4 years of French under the craziest Parisian lady ever, and that is saying something.

My revised apocalypse is not going as smoothly I planned. Maybe that's the sign of a good apocalypse.

The chapter title is a reference to a Monty Python sketch. Everyone in this tiny audience also hopefully knows who all the Beatles are.

**

* * *

**

**Chapter Thirteen: I Should've Expected The Spanish Inquisition**

* * *

In her youth, Kristen had always been a morning person. Her favorite part of the day had been the moment between sunrise and dawn, when half the sky was still blue and the moon was still in view, while the other half of the sky was pink and orange and bright. Nowadays, Kristen was very rarely outside at all, shuffled between Mama Oya's cave-like apartments and the room she shared with Adam.

Finally, a week after the Lalaurie Mansion had burned, a matter that had been gnawing at her brain for some time prompted her to crawl out of bed at that early hour between sunrise and dawn. Adam had flopped down beside her after she'd gone to sleep; he'd been out late with Sam and Dean again. He was a heavy sleeper and didn't so much as flinch when Kristen pulled on a yellow dress and some flip-flops and stumbled out the door. The morning air was surprisingly cold and she quickly came back inside to grab the flannel shirt she'd stolen from Bobby.

Pascal's nets were still hung over his door and Kristen fought the urge to knock; something about his smile never failed to cheer her up.

The only people in the streets were graveyard shift bartenders out for a smoke and homeless bums snoring on stoops. Kristen could smell the strong stench of the street cleaners' truck wafting down Burgundy Street, so she turned onto Bienville for her journey. She worked her way south and squinted in the early morning to see the towers of St. Louis Cathedral, her destination.

During the Inquisition, the Spanish government had sent a priest named Antonio de Sedella to oversee the souls of fledgling New Orleans. Rather than follow his orders, the priest had stayed loyal to the city, even after the Louisiana Purchase made New Orleans technically Protestant territory. In life, he'd been unceasing in his care of the sick and became known as Pére Antoine. Most locals knew that he'd continued his saintly work in death. His ghost stayed in St. Louis Cathedral and his form had been glimpsed, alternately in the choir loft or in the Jackson Square garden or even walking in the nearby streets.

It was Pére Antoine that Kristen had come to see. Her stomach tied up in knots just thinking about it. Adam would hardly approve of her actively seeking out a ghost, for any reason. And she might not even find him…

She circled the cathedral three times. The doors were closed for five o'clock Mass, so she defected into Jackson Square. All the hedges and greenery had been recently trimmed in anticipation for the arrival of spring. The red brick paths were deserted. There was nothing to be heard except the far, dulcet tones of a chorus chanting the Kyrie Eleison.

Kristen's stomach did a somersault when she finally saw him. He was slowly rounding the Andrew Jackson statue, completely absorbed in the prayer book he held in his hands. He wore a somber set of Capuchin robes and sandals. On top of his head was a crown of silvery hair and he was skinny, gaunt and exhausted looking.

She set herself in his path, unable to summon words. Pére Antoine took no notice of her.

"Excuse me," Kristen said near a whisper, falling into step with him. The old ghost still ignored her. "Okay, you probably get this a lot, people thinking they've seen you and trying to engage you in conversation, except I can _actually_ see you. I'm psychic or something…"

Pére Antoine turned a page in his prayer book.

"I'm not Catholic, but I hear you guys do this confession thing that I'd really like to try. I mean, it's not necessarily sins, and I just… I want to have a conversation with someone who might have answers, not vague half-truths, but definitive answers. And since you're dead and a priest, you're in a really good position to help me… I know you can hear me!"

"Regrese a mí cuando usted se muere de la fiebre amarilla o ha perdido su familia en una inundación," Pére Antoine finally replied, keeping his gaze in his book. "Vaya a un salón de la belleza si quiere quejarse a alguien."

"Es supuesto ser _un_ _santo_," Kristen snapped.

The dead priest stopped in his tracks, sighed and pocketed his prayer book.

"Lo siento," he said, putting a hand over her shoulders. "Parece aún en muerte, los sirvientes de Dios deben luchar por encontrar paciencia infinita. ¿Qué problemas usted, mi niña?"

* * *

Everyone in the clinic was dead. More or less. There was a young girl, perhaps twelve, who'd managed to crawl into the stairwell, but Crowley side-stepped her heaving form without getting anything on his shoes.

The demons at the front desk were easy kills. For that, Crowley lamented the stupidity of his race. No imagination. No ambition. It was times like these that Crowley dearly missed Azazel. Then again, Azazel had been a zealot who harnessed Crowley's talent for all the wrong purposes and after he'd died, Lilith had forced Crowley to loiter by the crossroads for petty soul theft.

That wasn't going to last much longer.

As Crowley made his way to the top floor, the stench of human remains grew stronger. The irony tang of human blood was perhaps his favorite. He could do without the rotting flesh peppered with boils. The only smell truly distasteful to him was the humans who decomposed in pools of their own waste, coughing and hacking as bile rose in their throats.

Of all the horsemen, Crowley admired Pestilence the least. He was more sorcerer than horseman. War had that lovely red sports car and preyed on the stupidity of humans, something Crowley was no stranger to. Famine did the same, in his own way, using that senseless, instinctual streak that people had for food and sex against them. Pestilence… well he just didn't have any flair. He was the odd man out. He was like the Ringo Starr to War and Famine's Lennon and McCartney.

A smirk crept across his face when he spotted the eagle-eyed demon standing watch over Pestilence's door. The horseman himself was sitting on the bedside of a diseased old woman and the demon stood at the nurses' station, lips curling when she spotted Crowley.

"I like your meat suit," he said and he was suddenly standing right behind her. She whipped around and took hold of his neck in a vice-like grip.

"Thanks, it's vintage," she sneered, bringing Crowley down to waist level. "What's your business? My master is at work."

"My business is none of yours," Crowley said quietly. The demon lackey saw a flash of silver in his hand, scoffing, because she didn't know it was a very special knife he'd nicked from the Winchesters when they weren't looking. Crowley brought it streaking into the demon's side and for a moment she flashed gold, like a sputtering machine, before she sank to the ground.

Crowley glanced at Pestilence; the dumb bastard was still gripping the hand of his old lady, looking on with delight as she began to writhe weakly and spew blood. This was going to be all too easy. He almost wished Dean Winchester had come up with something better to prove his loyalty.

Of course, killing Pestilence fit very well into Crowley's end game, so who was he to complain?

"Crowley, Crowley, Crowley…"

Crowley froze mid-knife swing when he heard Pestilence speak his name. He felt himself lifted into the air and thrown through a pane of glass. He stood, brushing shards away, trying to seem merely annoyed. The old lady was dead. Pestilence had his hands clasped in front of him, looking at Crowley like a toddler looks at candy they've just found on the ground.

"This is a gorgeous piece of craftsmanship," Pestilence mused. Crowley looked down to see the knife was no longer in his hand. Pestilence was twirling it lovingly between his slender fingertips. "It's pagan made, isn't it?"

"Hephaestus forged it, as a personal favor to me," Crowley said conversationally. "Etchings are mine though."

"Imbued with power by way of ritual sacrifice, correct?"

"Hephaestus, again," Crowley said. Pestilence gave him a sadistic, wide-eyed grin. His teeth were yellowing and rotten.

"And all this ingenuity, to defy your lord and master," he scolded, extending his hand toward Crowley. As Crowley had been topside for quite a while, it took him a minute to realize he was in pain. The feverish sickness of his host's body was pressing against him like a trash compactor. "As you can see, I've had my fun—" Pestilence gestured to the blood drenched granny laying still in her bed "—so I'm going to smite you quickly."

Crowley felt the sickness in his host's veins twist like rope and found himself spread-eagle on the ground. He had to admit, Pestilence was effective.

"But tell me," and as Pestilence knelt next to him, Crowley wriggled his arm so subtly that a human wouldn't even have seen it. "What is so important to those bumbling brothers that I didn't even warrant _face time_? I'm insulted," Pestilence said, clutching his heart with the hand he wore his ring on.

"They send their love," Crowley said, locking his eyes on the ring. "But they wanted this job done professionally."

He summoned all his strength and swung the little silver penknife he'd managed to get out of his sleeve. It landed on Pestilence's finger, severing the ring from his body. Crowley leapt up, scooping the ring on this his own digit.

The white opal glinted on his finger, the iron band adjusting comfortably to Crowley's hand. He couldn't suppress a triumphant smirk. With a wave of his hand, he tossed granny aside and took a seat. Pestilence was howling in pain on the floor, clutching his bloody stump of a finger.

"I'm going to kill you soon," Crowley mimicked, kicking Pestilence in the gut for good measure, for without his ring he could feel every blow to his body. "But first, you're going to tell me everything you know about George Harrison."

"_Who?_" Pestilence sobbed. Crowley picked up the demon-killing knife and the horseman yelped in pain as Crowley sliced off his other hand at the wrist.

"Sorry," Crowley said, settling back into his seat. He pocketed the knife. "I was using Beatles metaphors earlier. Tell me everything you know about Death."

* * *

"… I am afraid I don't know," Antoine sighed sadly. "Death illuminates that which you don't understand, though it does not provide answers. Whether or not your child possessed a soul when it was taken from you, I cannot tell you."

They were sitting on a bench outside the park, watching the sleepy shop-owners of St. Ann Street open up for the day. Down Decatur Street, street musicians were setting up next to the Café du Monde to beg money from the deluge of customers.

Kristen leaned forward and put her forehead in her hands, her throat catching.

"Doesn't it bother you that God would plan any of this?" she asked after a minute. "Let plagues and demons and angels run amok, leaving humanity to bear the brunt?"

"Without suffering or hardship, how on earth could we appreciate the joy and love of the Lord?" Antoine said. "And so it is with faith. Without the choice not to believe in the Gospel, faith is meaningless."

"It's not a question of faith," Kristen rebutted. "I know there's a God and a devil. But I sat in church every Sunday for eighteen years and nothing I heard ever prepared me for what's happened to me or what will happen next. The faithful and the faithless alike are dying and God hasn't revealed himself. I don't think this is what Revelations had in mind."

"Men of my kind have dedicated their lives to finding the purpose of life, to reasoning God in logic, to discovering the truth of His plan," Antoine explained in his low, smooth voice, squeezing Kristen's shoulder. "Yet none of us can wholly understand His will. None of us will ever know all, as He does."

"I don't think I believe in omniscience," Kristen muttered. Antoine stroked her hair gently and Kristen let her head fall on his shoulder. She was surprised that despite his incorporeal state, she could feel his boney clavicle beneath his coarse brown robes.

"Then do not," Antoine encouraged. "You are capable of great love, so believe in that. God will reveal himself in time."

"I'm kind of an abomination," she said, smiling bitterly to herself. "A psychic taking lessons from a voodoo priestess. That's all kinds of blasphemous."

"Are you referring to the priestess on Burgundy Street?" Pere Antoine asked abruptly, sitting up straight and upsetting Kristen's position. She sat up and nodded.

"I'm staying with her," she confirmed, watching Antoine's shifting visage. His calm priest demeanor was slipping away; his eyes were wide and his thunderous voice had risen a few decibels. She tried to scoot away, but his arm was around her shoulders.

"Then you are her!" he exclaimed. His other hand slipped over the yellow fabric of her dress to rest on her abdomen. "Et signum magnum paruit in caelo mulier amicta sole et luna sub pedibus eius," and his eyes flew to her forehead, "et in capite eius corona stellarum duodecim."

"I don't know Latin," Kristen said in a small voice, tearing herself away.

"Et _in utero habens_ et clamat parturiens et cruciatur ut pariat!" he continued, gripping the bench with his white knuckles, staring at Kristen as though star struck. "Et visum est aliud signum in caelo et ecce draco magnus rufus habens capita septem et cornua decem et in capitibus suis septem diademata!"

"I don't need an exorcism!" Kristen insisted shrilly, backing away. The dawn had dissipated and morning was upon them. Kristen was so panicked that she didn't notice the growing number of passerby who saw her arguing with an empty bench. "What are you saying?"

"Et cauda eius trahebat tertiam partem stellarum caeli!" Pére Antoine kept raving, his stern eyes appearing to water with tears. "Et misit eas in terram et draco stetit ante mulierem quae erat paritura ut cum peperisset filium eius _devoraret_!"

Kristen turned on her heel and fled.

* * *

"… mfhm… I didn't do it…"

"Guilty conscience?"

"Is it seriously morning?"

Adam groaned and shifted his head under his pillow in an effort to stave off the full sunlight. Kristen's sudden entrance into the apartment had roused him from a deep sleep. He could hear her rustling around the room, kicking aside clothes and paper.

"What were you doing all night?" Kristen asked. Her breath sounded oddly heavy, like she'd just been running.

"Tracking a rugaru. In a swamp." Adam said, voice muffled beneath his pillow.

"That explains the mud," Kristen muttered. There was the sound of running water and a splash. When Adam crawled out from his cocoon of sheets, he saw Kristen wiping off her face with a towel.

"Where've you been?" he said.

"Walking… to clear my head…" she shrugged. "I have to be at Oya's soon."

"What do you do in there all day?" Adam asked, rubbing his eyes.

"I visit a lot of dead ancestors," Kristen said, shrugging off Bobby's shirt. "I have this one Roman ancestor who was Empress for two weeks. I spent the whole time asking for tips on dimensional shift and she just force-fed me grapes." Her voice became the tiniest bit more shrill. "Really, no one's had anything useful about controlling astral projection, let alone taking someone with me." She pushed the straps of her yellow dress down her shoulders, letting it slide to the floor as she rifled through her closet. "I had this one French ancestor who actually touted herself as a sexual psychic, but her idea of heaven is this dumpy tavern and she didn't explain anything, she spent my entire visit being incredibly impressed by my ability to do long division—what are you smiling about?"

"Just enjoying your casual nudity," Adam explained, and indeed, he'd stopped listening at the words 'dimensional shift'. Kristen bit her lip and quickly covered her bare breasts with her arms.

"Oh. Well stop. I look like a biker chick with all my tattoos," she said, blushing.

Adam rolled his eyes and kissed her, then tossed her onto the bed. As she giggled and moaned, he ran his lips over each of her tattoos, the fleur-de-lis behind her ear, the tarot card on her back, the Celtic knot around her navel, the Enochian script around her waist, the octogram of creation on her right ankle and the Fourteenth Roman Legion symbol on her left. His last stop was the anti-possession ward that had been inked just beneath her hip bone.

"I'm going to be late," she said in a haze, but Adam still wasn't listening. They'd been here two weeks already and they still hadn't managed to have sex. He didn't plan on wasting his opportunity.

"It's not like she can start without you," he insisted, hoping it didn't come out as a complaint.

His fingertips grazed recently healed flesh. Adam's gaze swept down Kristen's thigh and saw two puncture marks poised right above her femoral artery.

"What are these?" he asked softly before he could stop himself. The holes couldn't have been more than a day old. Kristen sat up in a flash, almost kneeing him in the face. She was going to be completely mortified if he'd found something gross down there—it was a private nightmare of hers.

"Oh," she gasped when she got a proper look, "probably just mosquito bites."

"They look like teeth marks," Adam said, studying the edges of the marks and their distance apart, roughly the distance of a pair of canines.

"Are you serious?" Kristen asked with venom in her voice. It took Adam a second to realize she was offended. "Adam, I haven't had sex in three months, I'd know if someone was biting me there!"

"Kristen, I'm sorry, I just—" he said, desperately trying to backtrack. He now fully comprehended the driving impulse behind a man buying diamonds.

"I'm getting a little tired of this," Kristen retorted, scuttling off of the bed. "You never used to be such a manically jealous jerk."

"Manic?" Adam gave up. "Try reasonably doubtful!"

"Y'know, _I_ trust _you_," she said, "even when you're out at all hours doing God knows what!"

"I'm learning, hunting," Adam explained through gritted teeth. "I'm doing this so I can protect you, because if you hadn't noticed, people keep trying to kill us!"

"I'm sorry I can't be her at the end of the day to pat you on the head for being a good little hero!"

"Nah, you're just shut up all day with your incense and your tea, trying to get tips on how to screw Lucifer!"

Adam regretted those last ten words the moment he spoke them and couldn't blame Kristen when she seized the bedside lamp and lobbed it at his head. He ducked in time to miss it and it crashed into the wall behind him.

"_Get out!_" Kristen screamed, hot tears in her eyes. "Get out, you prick, get out!"

He obliged immediately and felt Kristen's weak fists beating against his back before the door slammed behind him.

Sam and Dean were sitting at the table, eyes on their food. It was clear from their tense postures that they'd hung on every word of the fight. Wishing he'd had the forethought to grab a shirt, Adam took the empty seat next to Sam, who passed him some toast and a sympathetic look.

"Word of advice," Dean said, eyes intently on the laptop he was pretending to use for research. "If ever there is a time to agree with a chick, it's when she's topless."

Adam said nothing and dryly swallowed some toast, ignoring the angry lump in his throat.

* * *

This was Gabriel's chance. He'd been playing nice little cherub ever since that witch blasted him home. Michael, seemingly impressed that Gabriel had even decided to fight, ordered him to be his agent on the ground. Gabriel had gone along like a good little lapdog. Now he saw that the service was no longer required.

At the appointed meeting place in downtown Detroit, Michael appeared, wearing John Winchester's meat suit.

"Nice look, bro," he commented as Michael blew out all the street lights on the block to scare off unsuspecting mortals. "I know you wanted a younger model, but salt-and-pepper's all the rage."

Michael raised an eyebrow and Gabriel considered giving up his undercover shtick right then and there, because even after millennia, the sheer humorlessness of his brothers never ceased to astound him.

"Gabriel," Michael replied in his even, practiced voice. "You've been with humans a long time."

"Have you seen the Spearmint Rhino? _Awesome_!"

"The prophet has told us Lucifer will come here, to this city, to seek his vessel," Michael continued. "This is as good a place as any to challenge him."

"Mind if I take the south side?" Gabriel offered. "There's some, uh, _nuns_ I wanna check out."

"I have a different task for you," Michael said and Gabriel bristled at this turn of events. His only chance of keeping Earth out of the frying pan was to find Lucifer before Michael did.

"What's the assignment?" Gabriel said airily.

"I need you to track the traitor Castiel," Michael said. "You and he have both spent prolonged time amongst humans. I think you will have an easier time finding him than Balthazar."

"Any particular reason you're giving me the stank job?" Gabriel asked, trying to lay the groundwork for staying on Earth. For all their guile, subterfuge, and omissions, angels were terrible at spotting outright lies. Usually. "I want a front row seat to you pulverizing Lucifer as much as the next guy."

"That's a lie," Michael said simply, and for a split second Gabriel thought the jig was up. "Lucifer treasured you, little brother. I wish to spare you the pain of watching his demise."

"You want to spare me temptation," Gabriel realized and he knew this was the time to cut and run. Without even a feeble attempt to defend his pride, Gabriel nodded his submission. "You got it, boss."

"If you should meet Raphael on your way, don't speak so glibly," Michael warned. "He still distrusts you."

"I thought he was tracking Seers," Gabriel said. If he'd had a heart, it would have been beating very fast right now.

"He only has one left to eliminate," Michael revealed. "She's been well-hidden, so he's been searching her line in Heaven. He'll find her soon enough."

_Yup_, Gabriel thought, feeling the euphoric release of his true form as he departed the earth, _time to cut and run_.

* * *

_Regrese a mí cuando usted se muere de la fiebre amarilla o ha perdido su familia en una inundación. Vaya a un salón de la belleza si quiere quejarse a alguien._  
Come back to me when you are dying of the yellow fever or have lost your family in a flood. Go to a beauty salon if you want to complain to someone.  
_Es supuesto ser un santo.  
_You're supposed to be a saint  
_Lo siento. Parece aún en muerte, los sirvientes de Dios deben luchar por encontrar paciencia infinita. ¿Qué problemas usted, mi niña?_  
I am sorry. It seems even in death, the servants of God must struggle to find infinite patience. What troubles you, my child?

_Et signum magnum paruit in caelo mulier amicta sole et luna sub pedibus eius, et in capite eius corona stellarum duodecim. Et in utero habens et clamat parturiens et cruciatur ut pariat. Et visum est aliud signum in caelo et ecce draco magnus rufus habens capita septem et cornua decem et in capitibus suis septem diademata. Et cauda eius trahebat tertiam partem stellarum caeli. Et misit eas in terram et draco stetit ante mulierem quae erat paritura ut cum peperisset filium eius devoraret._  
And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. And being with child, she cried travailing in birth: and was in pain to be delivered. And there was seen another sign in heaven. And behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns and on his heads seven diadems. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered: that, when she should be delivered, he might devour her son.


End file.
